Critical zoologists
The Blind, 2009
A professor, recently retired from my department, noted last week that the fantastic footage of nature documentaries has made watching animals a boring procedure for students. Animals just don't do all that much most of the time (that includes you!) The Institute of Critical Zoologists takes a different perspective, asserting through their work that our observations are a burden to animals and not just to ourselves. The photographic part of the project, which I discovered in "portfolio," expresses an impossibility of removing observer effects from our ethological data collection. More endearing—and troubling—still is the garb of scientific credibility the Institute adopts through its description of its mission and its projects (including a compelling faux-history of how the Institute was founded). Do our real efforts in journals, conferences, grant applications, and monographs come across as so staid?
