Sarah Dang

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," Orwell famously concluded in Animal Farm, painting the connections between humans, animals, and political rhetoric. Animal imagery is not unique in civic discourse though, often shaping judgment and manufacturing belonging. Dogs, pigs, sheep, etc., this piece questions the way animals, particularly rats, are perceived as exterminatable and how it parallels the lives of those existing in antagonized bodies.

Rats symbolically are interesting and special to me, especially seeing them in alternate ontologies like the Vietnamese Zodiac where they’re perceived as intelligent and resourceful. Between these contradictory paradigms, perhaps the images and meanings we assign to both rats and people are fluid? I further captured this paradoxical gulf by sourcing most of my images from a variety of ecology and pest removal sites while I contemplated what acceptance vs alienation looks like especially if we attach “being seen” with “being valued”. 

As I trained this pix2pix model through 274 epochs (passes), I originally saw images of rats spit out without eyes or clear outlines. The algorithm created nebulous and slightly invisible beings until they become more distinct. The way the model warped and began to identify and give definition to what a rat is is one way I imagine “seeing” beings who are often treated as undesirable. Ultimately, exploring the connection between visuals and language and how it manipulates power is a way this piece questions who and what deserves respect.