WHY

I've had many thought processes and drives throughout this project, so this post is an attempt in some clarity in my practice. To begin, my project was based around the relationship between human and animals, and how animals are a huge part of our day to day life; in yoga we reenact certain animals for flexibility, in drama we position ourselves as a character of a certain animal for emphasis on personality, in Chinese astrology we are assigned a certain animal yearly and it helps perceive ourselves. We also live peacefully with animals - certain ones we do not eat such as dogs, cats and it is this ignorant categorizing of animals and how much we value their lives which has been such a drive in this project. Recently I attempted becoming a Pescatarian, somebody who does not eat land animals, but continues to eat fish. When I explain this to people I feel ignorant in myself that I value the lives of land animals more than sea animals - maybe it is because I feel more connected to land, as the sea is a long way from home. There is one sea creature in particular that I would never consider eating and that is the octopus - they are the most intelligent species in the ocean and they are also sentient. So the project revolved around our relationship with octopus in particular and how they are treated in our world and how we communicate with them... In Korea, they eat octopus whilst still alive which I find quite shocking and cruel, yet they call it a delicacy. I want to expose these relationships humans have with octopus and hopefully evoke thought about how we can have a different relationship that is equal. Not an intimate relationship although my hybrid sculptures of the human/octopus combination may suggest as such, but a relationship that connects us strongly in some other way. Sy Montgomery has written a book called Soul of an Octopus which is an exploration into the wonder of consciousness... "I have always loved octopuses. No sci-fi alien is so startlingly strange. Here is someone who, even if she grows to one hundred pounds and stretches more than eight feet long, could still squeeze her boneless body through an opening the size of an orange; an animal... with a beak like a parrot and venom like a snake and a tongue covered with teeth... who can shape-shift, change colour and squirt ink. But most intriguing of all...octopuses are remarkably intelligent." Within the book she explores the emotional and physical world of the octopus - and the remarkable connections this astonishingly complex, spirited creature makes with humans. Animal agriculture and sea life being destroyed by the second is a huge issue in society due to the high demand of fish. Scientists predict the oceans will be fishless if we carry on how how we are by the year 2040. If the oceans die, we die.