Pet Dander at the RCA Summer Exhibition

s the Royal College of Art is now underway, over the next few days I will be posting some of the thoughts behind the projects with links to collaborators and sources which I have collected in the works development.

The first piece is called Pet Dander:

Domestic animals kept in the home may help boost human immune systems by exposing the owner to a wealth of pet dander, which is the dead skin cells, hair and parasites the animal harbours.

However with selective breeding practice and genetic engineering on the horizon we have created a new league of pets like the labradoodle and similar crosses and Allerca cats. These marketed as hypoallergenic lifestyle pets. Due to the unique breeding of these animals they are designed not to expose humans to allergenics like pet hair. Through this practice we have unwitingly stripped our cohabitation with these animals from the health benefits they once had.

With our revised understanding of health, hybrid animals are designed specifically to harbour pet dander, dead skin, hair and pet parasites in order to desensitize and strengthen their human co-habitants immune systems. In this pursuit a mixture of organisms are engineered to create an animal which has a dense coat, perfect for harbouring parasites, sheading its hair and has a natural behaviour to forage and graze, collecting dirt and bacteria as it does. Importantly, the animal just asks to be embraced and petted.