World Building

Group Members: Jared Richardson, Ryan Romanovitch, Daniel Taylor, Sidney Unga

FINISHED PRODUCTS:

Radio News Broadcast Clip: https://soundcloud.com/jared-richardson-3/leafite-news

Propaganda Posters:

Dirt Pyramid

Garden of Eden Video:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B02kXVCUAhNhYVpsMWZJZHRENjQ

GROUP ARTIST STATEMENT:

Julian Bleecker said, “Design [helps] tell stories that provoke and raise questions. Like props that help focus the imagination and speculate about possible near future worlds — whether profound change or simple, even mundane social practices.” We hoped to capitalize on this idea with artifacts that both directly and subtly tell stories about the fictional world we created—one in which plants and animals can speak, and where humans are torn on whether or not they should treat these things as food. This simple premise gave us lots of ideas of things we could make, as such a politically charged environment would definitely be cause for not only propaganda but normal, every-day aspects of citizens.

What would you do if you couldn’t eat plants or animals? That is the big question raised by the world we created. We imagined that it would break people up into different groups, those who truly do not want to eat anything living, those who feel okay eating plants but not animals and those who love meat and don’t care about the plants or animals. The two most radical groups are the Leafites who eat only dirt and do all in their power to protect the plants and animals from the anti-Leafites, who are at the opposite end of the spectrum. We tried to create artifacts that would represent the conflicts of such a world. The radio broadcast gives a little insight into the trouble brought about by the anti-Leafites while the two propaganda posters give a clear idea of the ideals of these two groups. The dirt pyramid gives an even better idea of the extremes the Leafites go to in order to protect life. We also wanted to create an artifact that would tell a little bit of the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, if not only the serpent, but also the apple could speak. We put together a small clip that would tell the story of Adam and Eve as it would be in our world, where both plants and animals could speak.

In our world, humans still exist as the beings with the highest intelligence, but one of the questions asked is whether or not you would eat something that you can have a relationship with. We don’t eat our pets because we come to love them and create a bond with them. If an apple could talk to us, would we want to “kill” it by eating it? In his blog post entitled, “How Do You Vegans Justify Killing Plants When They’re Living Things, Too?” Bobby Rock says the following, “In other words, if we’re all destined to be murderers anyway, what difference does it make who or what we’re murdering, be it plant or animal?” This shows the complicated nature of our current world and the rhetoric surrounding the ethics of what we eat, in our world such divisions and arguments would be much more exaggerated and extreme.