Chicken Love
Chicken Love is a design project that explores different ways of connecting Chickens with humans. Chicken is one of the world’s most consumed meats, but how much do we know about chicken? The designer questions chicken consumers’ perception and knowledge of chicken by retelling chickens’ stories. The project also explores how we can use design to build empathy with chickens to provoke reflection on unethical and unsustainable actions. To find out, the designers used different approaches to explore storytelling methods.
1. Becoming A Rooster
To know about chicken is to first become a chicken
Ask the hens what a perfect rooster should look like:
Here are the criteria to assess a rooster
Hens pay attention to several physical
traits when assessing a rooster as a
potential mate, these are:
- Comb
- Eyes
- Earlobes
- Wattles
- Feathers of its neck and tail (size plays a
key role)
Spurs size
- Dance moves (a rooster that makes
robust tidbitting/dancing movements
tend to attract the ladies)
- The type of food a rooster use while
tidbitting (tidbitting also includes giving
corn, other favourite seed, worms,
insects, snakes, frogs and even small
rodents to win favours from the ladies)
2. Manifesto
Rules and declarations that facilitate a strong and fair human chicken world.
For Those Who Desire the Meat of A Chicken
Chickens are equal to Humans
We can eat chickens and chickens can eat us
We are both Omnivores
Do not underestimate a chicken’s intelligence
Do not ignore a chicken’s love and compassion
Do not neglect a hen’s connection with her little chicks
Chickens can be food, pets, friends, or others depending on the individual
However, one must deeply respect the chicken its interacting with
Have an open heart and have patience, chickens will surprise you
Learn from chickens and be patient like a chicken
Consumers, Farmers, Chickens, speak up and
let’s work together
Consumers, don’t get fooled by the labels, invest in your chickens
Farmers, speak up to raise chicken awareness
Chickens, use your intelligence to go negotiate with humans
Let’s create rules, boundaries, that allow us all to stay happy and fulfilled
3. A comic book of Chicken stories
A pocket size comic book that illustrates everything about chickens. The book ranges from the problems of our modern chicken today to chicken’s emotions and intelligence.
A full copy of the book: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/d8e4fcf956.html
4. Chicken Human School
An imagined school where both chickens and children will go to school to learn and play together. A situation that pushes both species to think and take actions to create a uniform world.
School requirements
Currently the Chicken Human School only accepts children between 3-6 years old, between 5 to 547 days and cockerels between 5 to 168 days. While humans can only start to understand basic math at 3 year old, chicken can understand it 5 days after birth. Due to different development speeds of the two species, I have taken into consideration that hens will become mothers at the age 18 months while roosters will become fathers when they are 5 months old. To meet the standards of the life span of the chickens, specific chick’s will graduate after 5 months or 18 months old.
7 Subjects
1. Communication + Language
2. Physical Development
3. Personal, social, emotional development
4. Literacy
5. Mathematics
6. Understanding of the world (Science)
7. Expressive arts + design
To facilitate chicken and children’s development, I have designed two educational toys for the students to study math together. Both games require an instructor to deliver instruction written on the game manual.
Exhibition
Stretch the Spring
MA Design 2020-2021
Goldsmiths university of London
Lewisham college Deptford
December 13 - December 17, 2021