Cow is an attempt to model the digestive system’s complex mysteries with crude mechanisms. It refers specifically to Descartes’s mechanistic understanding of the body. His conclusion that animals are no more than complex machines incapable of feeling pain became useful in justifying the practice of vivisection. In a larger sense, Cow symbolizes our constant need to impose crude theoretical models on reality.

Cow was created during a residency at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. Although it seems obvious that children have conceptual models of the world radically different from adults. I was still surprised when I found out how much this limited what I could do. It made me think about how segregated each individual’s understanding of the world is. In a way, Cow is about the limitations of my own understanding when confronted with the complexity of the physical world.

The process by which children begin to adopt society’s aversion to feces also fascinated me. It was interesting to study how small children who have not yet learned to feel shame and discomfort about bodily functions reacted to the piece. The response of parents with small children was also surprisingly open. I think the playful and abstracted form of the Cow to a large extent eased any cultural anxiety people might have felt about the biological dimension of life.

Special Thanks:
Greg Witt
The wonderful people at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.