Second Livestock

A Virtual Reality World for Poultry.

Chicken with Virtual Reality headset.

Second Livestock is a virtual reality world for conventionally farmed chickens. Under the guise of providing a solution to maintain the profitability of conventional chicken farming while allowing the chickens to be “free range,” Second Livestock engages the ethical debates of contemporary animal husbandry and humanity's increasing immersion into virtual worlds. The audience experiences the work as a PowerPoint presentation and live demonstration of the CCI (Chicken-Computer Interface).

The aesthetics of the presentation are intentionally poor—mirroring the presentations frequently given at technology conferences and tradeshows. The live demonstration of the enclosure does not involve a chicken, rather a volunteer from the audience straps on a human-scale VR headset and places their hands on a treadmill. Though scaled in size, the virtual cameras are still aligned at the angles that correspond to the anatomical position of a chicken's eyes. This proves to be quite disorienting for the volunteer, but forces him or her to experience the world as a chicken.

Below are a few images and video from the presentation. For more information and images visit:

www.SecondLivestock.com.

Participant navigating the virtual world.

Technical rendering of Chicken-Computer Interface.

Chicken Coop of the Future.