I was rather nervous about my mid-terms but in spite of all the inhibitions, the feedback was very useful and the environment of the mid-term presentations was very positive and in good spirit.

 

Guest Faculty Feedback

As I talked about animal adoption a lot in my presentation, it sparked up interesting conversations with the guest visitors, David and Aarati, as both of them have adopted dogs during the pandemic. They recommended talking to organisations like Hearts and Bones and digging deeper into the reasons behind the screening process that they have. Looking into why animals need to be re-homed would help narrow down the scope if the research. The term “Who rescued who” came up during this conversation where they talked about how the dogs they adopted rescued the family and vice versa. David also mentioned looking into the “moment of bond” when people realize that the animal they have adopted has now accepted them. There were also suggestions about reflecting on why I would not be able to adopt an animal right now, having detailed conversations and understanding the major shifts in perspective that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic and looking into studies regarding the human-animal(dog) bonds where dogs behave certain ways to get verbal praise from their humans.

 

Peer Feedback

There were suggestions to also talk to vets who can give insights from a different perspective. I also spoke about animals being gifted as pets during holiday seasons and that seemed to be an area of interest to further explore. Certain approaches that came into the suggestions were-

• What do humans perceive their pets as? Are they “merchandised”? Or is it comfort? Or just love? Getting a dog during bad times in life.
• Going to see when people are actually picking up their dogs for the first time after adopting them
• Why are people attracted to only certain breeds? Stereotypes around different breeds and their personalities
• Considering places with higher adoption rates of animals and see what is working there.
• Ethics involving how and what humans feed their pets (eg. vegetarian vs non-vegetarian food)
• Seemed distant on the whole

 

Ideas and clarifications moving forward

The most common question that came out of the feedback was that there needs to be more clarity moving forward on what I intend to do, the direction I wish to take this project in and what my perspective is as a creative practitioner. How can I choose a direction for this moving forward? What would my output be and in what context?  Which medium can I use to express this? How to take this further from a Design and Technology standpoint? What excites me the most about this topic?

What interests me most to take this forward is the relationship between humans and their pets, positives and negatives. Some of the points that came up which talk about the way animals bring comfort to people but also how that may not necessarily be in a positive manner. I want to communicate these aspects of this relationship in a physical form of representation.