If you were tasked to train/teach dolphins how to be artists and express themselves via creative expression, what method of doing so would you designate for them?
If you were tasked to train/teach dolphins how to be artists and express themselves via creative expression, what method of doing so would you designate for them?
Was wondering this in celebration of the fact dolphins have officially been confirmed to have their own translatable proto-language, a longtime speculation we kind of already knew and which fulfills a friend's prophecy. It's common to train animals to perceive and perform art, and/or for them to already have a sense of what it is. Give an elephant a brush and a canvas and they'll paint glyphs of other elephants, chimps can draw avant-garde "masterpieces", and pigeons can even be trained to recognize the difference between good and bad art.
Dolphins surpass all of these animals in intelligence. But there's just one problem, they live underwater. And water tends to destroy most art mediums. Paper canvases shrivel, residue washes and floats away, hammers made for sculpting tend to strike softer, sculpting ice floats, fashion requires sources of fabric you can't get underwater, you get the idea. A dolphin's life is Murphy's Law for an artist. But for an artist, if there's a will, there's a way, and humans are known to challenge what we expect to be ways in which art can be created, such as with crop circles, Nazca lines, shadow art, and soap sculptures made from microwaving soap into molds. What improvised method/means of artform would you coach dolphins to do who want to be artists if you had to do so in some way?
I know what I wouldn't do.
I wouldn't give a human woman and dolphin man LSD in a shallow pool meant to look like an apartment while having the human give the dolphin hand jobs.
14You'd be correct in your caution, as it just so happens that was all tried, to disastrous results.
8
Dance!
It doesn't create a permanent product like the things you mentioned, but it's definitely a method of artistic expression =)
5But that's kind of what I'm looking for, permanent products.
2Are you planning to build an aquarium by any chance?
2
What about interpretive dance? Or synchronized water ballet?
4That's art but not the same kind I was asking/wondering about. That's more performative art, or "the arts", than the kind of thing you'd learn to form in an art class.
2
Dolphin paintings are for sale here:
4Yeah, but they teach them to do that outside the water, in environments specially made so they have no issue with it. I mean modes of expressive artistry that can be done while under the water, in their natural niche. Think, what can you teach a dolphin that they can take with them back to the wild and maybe teach to younger dolphins?
I'm sure, for example, if there were crops that grew underwater, they could make their own crop circles.
1
id teach them how to jump super high over humans heads and shit on them like a bird. Let them express their distaste for people they dont like.
3That's nice but that's a performance art, the "arts" as opposed to a work of art.
2the shit is their paint and we are their canvass
1
I think a synchronized dance where they swim in cool patterns and interesting movements would be a good form of expression. They can flex their z axis movements.
2They could stack rocks to create a mosaic.
2Wikipedia says that they "lack short wavelength sensitive visual pigments in their cone cells", so they don't see blue as well as we do... Which isn't surprising really.
3
Rainbow Nose Condoms. I'm sure they will express themselves, especially if they have the microsoft logo.
2I'd introduce the concept to them of making sculptures from the remains of other creatures by snagging the bones together.
2Ah, I understand
1Water paint
1Wouldn't the paint particles float/wash away?
1And the real reason why the ocean is blue is revealed.
1