Score:
Play with your pet on some cardboard or preferred destructible material.
Let them have fun and damage said material!
Use any markings as dot/line guides to follow for painting.
Paint.
Display.
By Sophie Uldry
Artist’s Statement:
The Playful Cat Collab is a game of creating art with your cat, primarily motivated by my love for… well, cats… but with the obligatory emotional cat-lady reason out of the way, my artwork was heavily inspired by the Fluxus movement and some of John Cage’s philosophies. Specifically, my artwork takes inspiration from the Fluxus’ use of chance and randomness, John Cage’s ideas of unintentionality, and his desire to make anyone an artist. Anyone who takes part in following my score would have become an artist by the end, and they would do so using the randomness generated by their cat’s destruction of a particular material. This follows Cage’s belief in balancing the constraints (of following your cat’s lead in this case) and freedom of what you do with said constraints, as well as his belief that the player of this game would become the artist (Pearce, C. “Games As Art”).
The game itself is simple, play with your cats and use whatever leftover chaos your cat has created as a guide for your painting. My goal for players who follow this score is to bond with your cat, let loose and follow your cat’s lead, have fun experiencing your cat doing what they do best (chaos), and be proud of something that you created. In addition to the obvious random guide generation caused by the involved cat, since the rules are so simple it’s overall a highly variable game. You could use cardboard, tissue paper, paper, fabric, paint, markers, crayons, charcoal, etc. as your project materials, which will guarantee an entirely different result each time you repeat this process with your cat. Below are a couple pictures on both the process of completing this game, and the results for each iteration. Note the differences in both projects, though following the same instructions, caused by the difference in cat interactions and materials.
Coaxing my cat to my desired material with catnip
Cat interacting with the chosen material
The cat’s finished product, now it’s my turn
Fully painted a finished product
Cats creating the painting guides on tissue paper
Scanned tissue paper and reprinted in B&W such that it is easier to follow guidelines