Tuesday 5th June 2018, 2:00pm
The exhibit "CARNEVALE" by artist Andrea Roe, which explores pigs' enthusiasm for investigative play, is on display at The Roslin Institute until the end of June.
Andrea Roe is a Lecturer in Sculpture at the Edinburgh College of Art. In 2016, she was a Leverhulme Trust artist in residence working with Scotland's Rural College (SRUC) on the Easter Bush Campus, home of The Roslin Institute.
In April last year, Andrea came back to the Campus to revisit one workshop idea to explore animal welfare questions. Together with artist Cath Keay, who is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of Design at Edinburgh College of Art, they designed and produced eight sculptural objects that would appeal to both humans and pigs, so that the experience would be a shared one and mutually enriching.
Brian Mather, Senior e-Learning Developer at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies filmed the pigs' reaction.They chose materials that would invite the pigs to play: the pigs could smell, tear apart and eat the objects, and they were designed as if for a carnival or fun fair, called Pig KerPlunk, Popcorn Piñata, Fruit Machine and Sweep Sensation.
Andrea's work was connected to the work of Professor Alistair Lawrence - Chair of Animal Behaviour & Welfare at The Roslin Institute and SRUC.
Alistair's group is interested in the causes and consequences of 'positive' behaviour such as play in farm animals as well as how to enrich the environment for animals. Video is a good way to quantify and record play behaviour.
"It seems to make common sense to keep animals in conditions where they can behave naturally but it may be that to facilitate this happening on a large scale we need to first demonstrate the benefits to humans."
Professor Alistair Lawrence, Chair of Animal Behaviour & Welfare, University of Edinburgh and SRUCAfter the workshop, Andrea compiled a newspaper publication called "CARNEVALE", with contributions from Alistair Lawrence, SRUC scientist Professor Françoise Wemelsfelder and creative writer Tessa Berring, as well as a video featuring the pigs with play objects. In the newspaper and video, we can see the pigs' keen curiosity for novel objects and enthusiasm for investigative play.
"Throughout the process of designing and making the objects we thought about what matters to pigs and carefully crafted objects that they could interact with and which would fit their body proportions."
Andrea Roe, Lecturer, Edinburgh College of ArtRoslin Innovation Centre
The University of Edinburgh
Easter Bush Campus
Midlothian EH25 9RG
