I'm a bit lost as to what to do for the visual/design component of my dissertation. This is a battery hen from a factory farm which I have given a human head. I was thinking about how the themes in Aristophanes' Birds and Orwell's Animal Farm are somewhat similar. I thought I could take these literary/allegorical examples of anthropomorphism and put them in a modern context, with modern factory farm animals as characters. You can't really set Birds or Animal Farm in a modern commercial farm, but I guess that would sort of be the point, that we value animals as symbols and enjoy them when we want them around, but when we don't, it's out of sight, out of mind. And the plots in both Animal Farm & Birds: Both are about (but then not really about) animals gaining agency and power despite humans. So it could be that the very ridiculous juxtaposition of such a story within a modern setting could be quite confronting. I don't know. That is just one idea. However my dissertaion also talks about awareness, and these sorts of references would not perhaps have the effect of making people very aware of anything. Although the point may come across anyway if the subject matter is largely factory farming, with a few subtle references to tie it into my main point about the animal-human relationship. There is also the issue of creating something which comes across as too cliche, too preachy, 'too animal rights', when my message is really not about politics so much as ideas about animals. That is a fine line to walk. I found some really interesting essays about such issues here: Antennae Magazine I used this as a reference in my written work but I've been going over it again now as I try to think of WHAT TO DO (??!?!?!) for the visual component. I need to decide quite soon, as the deadline is fast approaching and I don't have a lot of time or access to resources to work on it. This is really stressing me out!!