( have credits to the video owners first and a little discretion )

(me) – What do you know about dancing horses at the moment?

(me) I’m going to show you a few seconds of a short clip and tell me what you think after.

=After watching video=

(me)What did you think of that video?

(me) I’m going to now show you the same sport but differently..

=After watching video=

(me) So what did you think of that?

-After reply-

( me ) Do you now still think this is ( whatever they say )

 

This is just a very simple script as its more of a reaction interview than a regular interview.

During rodeos we’ll be focusing more on the horse side. Many horses are injured during these events. Once the horses are injured and are no longer able to perform they get “put down”

When a horse bucks it can cause pain in the back and neck when trying to buck of its rider. Horses have a heavy “fight or flight” like most people do. When a horse can it’ll run. However if it’s concerned or threatened or scared the horse will buck. Horses buck for fun but there’s a fine line between a playful buck and a fearful Buck. Take for example, strawberry fudge a horse who was killed July 19 2009 during a rodeo. During the 2009 forntier days rideo many horses were injured, but strawberry fudge was the only one reported by the local media sharks efforts to get local media to report on other animal injuries were ignored.

There’s a video online showing strawberry’s death- this is graphic so have a look at your own discretion. The stress going through rodeo horses making them stressed out. As I mentioned earlier the “fight or flight” and start bucking right away, others run for a bit then start to buck, this puts pressure on the horse for being aggressive and may end up chucking itself onto the ground in order to try and get the person of their back. The horses that get badly injured they usually get put down by either a injection or with a silent gun to the head. Quick, swift and painless. They don’t do this respectfully. I’m rodeo and possibly many other places, they are out into a small long box with other horses and shot in the head one by one. I am aware that putting a horse down is normal, but they do it a lot more respectfully. Rodeos are a cheap quick entertainment to watching horses get scared out of their mind.

Today I managed to get 3 people for an interview practice so I know what to do and so they know roughly what to expect for the final piece. I’ll have to edit the video tomorrow and post it for a rough plan on what the final piece would be.

I need to ask someone to be the  camera man for the final piece as I want it to have a great quality outcome. Im not 100% sure if I would like to have the interview in the studio or somewhere else.

We had to pick a piece of paper blindly that had a word on it relating to nature. I got given trees so with clay I made some water droplets on a stick. However, my droplets didn’t go well at all, they came out horrid the photos. As you can see, this cane out horribly so I made another picture of some blossoms.

These came out a lot better and the results go better with the card I was assigned with 🌸

Seven feelings – joy, anger, sadness, fear, love, dislike and liking.

Paul Ekman

Anger, distrust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise

Robert Plitchik

Joy and sadness, anger and fear, trust and distrust, surprise and anticipation

Basic emotions that emotions that are said to have evolved in response to the ecological challenges faced by our ancestors.

They are primitive and are said to be “hardwired” with each basic emotion relating to a distinct neurological circuit.

This means that we are hardwired to respond to certain situations with a basic emotion bases on our own ancestors.

Basic emotions are also referred to as “affect programs” and are known to be innate, universal, autopmatic and fast.

They trigger behaviors with a high survival rate. This is different to emotions such as nostalgia, which are developed later on, and are for example, not attributed to infants or animals.

My final project

Anger, shock, disappointed, Disheartened

I’ve decided I will interview one of my friends for some research. It’ll be a video interview with possibly two people reacting to a video that I have. I’m not sure when this interview will happen but after the interview has happened I need to make a survey about what people think about horse abuse.

For the interview i may book the studio but I wouldn’t mind it being outside with a more  presentable background, the video will be shown in the interview video as well so the viewer and interviewee can see the video.

we were introduced to Cueva de las Manos that is basically what cave men did to paint, its been relevant for over 13,000 years / since 700AC. They had no materials to do this so they just used earthy colours and a cave wall with their hands as a silhouette. We experimented with the natural colours  first, I just did black and a blood red-for my last one I wanted to express it with the colours from my final project piece trying to make it look as harsh as I could with my hand. The results were odd but i feel that ive got my message out. Later on we will be cutting out some stencils and using brusho again BUT with our own images so this time it will really looks a lot better.

Dressage – Bit Abuse

A quick definition of Rollkur. Is a hyper flexion of the horse’s neck being a practice in equestrianism defined as “flexion of the horse’s neck achieved through aggressive force” and is banned by the world governing body, the International Federation for Equestrian Sports. This is a huge problem in dressage, it is used outside of dressage but however is more common inside of dressage. There’s usually foam from the horse’s mouth attempting to open its mouth with a tight nose band. The rider’s hands go to loosen it slightly then go back. This is known as  “seesawing” the horse’s mouth, it does alot of damage to the horses cervical vertebrae and the mandible. To get the fancey affect in dressage, the neck is always unnaturally low, this causes pain. Almost like if a human had to sit up right with their head down for countless hours, it would start to hurt and would end up possibly hurting a muscle. In Dressage there’s the classical Kick > Pull > Whip > Buck. This only ever happens when the horse is extremely uncomfortable.

When doing dressage you need to look presentable. Most riders that that to the extreme and have the hassle of “bit abuse”, the bridle plays a huge part in this type of abuse. There are bridles that are bit free and perfectly fine for the horse to use without being pulled by the mouth. Not all bits are bad, its how you treat them. We all know the bit is the metal going through the horses mouth, this actually goes over the tongue that when unreasonable amounts  pressure is applied the tongue will most likely become weak and most times even split. However, extreme measures in dressage can lead to a horse having breathing problems with damage to the neck, throat and body. The body can become very sensitive if they are hit with a whip ( as most of them are ) I am not saying whips are bad no, they can be used to help teach a horse, but used in the wrong way with too much pressure can cause them to associate a whip as a bad thing.

 

Dancing.

Yes, seeing a horse dancing is beautiful but really, how some people teach horses how to dance you wouldn’t look at a dancing horse the same way again. The Pillar Method. A horse a tied between two pillars and gets whipped from behind to start trotting, nerveless it is held back by the halter or bit. Once the horse starts to learn to trot on the same spot when it sees a whip they’ll start hitting it on its front legs to get a better result. That way it’ll lift the legs higher to try and escape the pain but it wont be able to go anywhere but the same spot. Like The Lick Method, chains are often used around the horses legs, with the same affect the chains will hit its legs while moving that makes it moving its legs outwards. This is not necessary for a horse to dance, dancing is sometimes used in dressage as well. Along side the dancing they also have to get their head down to make it look more “elegant”. There are more natural way to get a horse a dance, yes it may take a long time, but its better knowing that the horse isn’t going through any physical pain when practising. Having chains, whips and pillars can come across triggering to the horse that has possibly been abused by this method as with any animal or human, if they’ve been abused with a particular piece they will do anything to follow the “rules”.

 

Just like dressage the same rules apply when performing. They may gather foam up at the mouth and start to drool, not because it’s fun but because it’s tongue has no where to go, it can’t swallow because of the bit in its mouth that blocks most of the way.