What factors lead humans to develop early in life a pro-social behavior outside their natural order? Within this project, we investigates these ideas in a series of illustrations depicting «fantasy animals». These animals were developed aiming towards visually elaborating the major morphologies in nature, and combining them into mostly new depictions of life.
The foundations of our persona develop throughout our younger years, eventually becoming part of our individual identities in later stages of our lifes. These thematics are just a few that the fields of anthropology and psychology must expand upon, and remain a contentious field of research. Understanding these fields are vital for us to understand how grown adults develop their sense of perception, molded as a product of their environment and circumstances. Such as in the development of this research and the field of anthropozoology, we can learn how our perception can change based of the different roles animals that play a in our everyday life.
In cooperation with the project «Children and Nature», I try to better understand how the social, geographical and economic circumstances, may play a role shaping our cognition and empathy towards animals. My role within the project has been to develop the illustrations of fantasy creatures that will be used within a series of interviews, meant to understand the different perceptions based on the design of animals that children have never seen before. And with this you can also participate and discover; «What do you learn when observing an fake creature?»
William Hellberg Yanic
BA-Diplome 2021
Mentor: Karin Seiler
Cooperation Partner: Prof. Dr. Katja Liebal – Human Biology & Primate Cognition, Life Sciences, Institute of Biology Leipzig University