Happy Cow
Speculative bovine sex toys
Can we give cows under our care the dignity of pleasure? Is there a responsibility to enrich the lives of animals rather than just eliminate pain?
Happy Cow proposes speculative sex toys for cows in order to make standard industrial farming practices more pleasurable for them. It is a design investigation into the arbitrariness of human empathy and the power imbalance between human and non-human species through the lens of commodified farm animals.
86% of the public support passing a law on animal sentience in the UK, recognising the capacity of animals to experience positive and negative feelings such as pleasure, joy, pain, and distress. However, when this clashes with human interests and desires, we generally disconnect from the issues and don’t consider the aspects of a life worth living for working animals.
The proposed adult toys make a commentary on known industrial farm practices that are regarded as an unavoidable part of farming. They aim to make farming more pleasurable for dairy cows by recontextualising their experiences and the tools used to bring them to a level of human understanding. They provide a life with pleasure, not one only geared towards serving human needs.
This project uses design as a critical and provocative tool that questions our current anthropocentric practices and challenges the future of interspecies relations. It seeks to create catalysts for debate and empathy by offering the viewer a new perspective on ethical issues.
Ece Tan
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