Ludens Luna
The story of my nightly encounter with a pig and a strange object.
Animals play, so they must be more than merely mechanical things. We play and know that we play, so we must be more than merely rational beings, for play is irrational. (Huizinga 1980, 4)
Like rows of a plantation, here too between the pens that divide the small pigs into smaller groups, pathways are laid out. The two pathways stretch all the way to the end of the hall. As I slowly walk through, the pigs startle, looking at me or attempting to locate the source of the sounds, communicating among themselves. I am gazing at the pigs, my elevated viewpoint lends an eerie sensation of being an overseer. I can survey them all, but only a few can see me, unable to see their neighbors. Time and again, I hear a slightly higher vocalization, somehow between a scream and a grunt, standing out amidst the other sounds the pigs produce. Are they warning each other about me, the unfamiliar wanderer? It is only now that I feel like an intruder, trespassing, not in the sense of trespassing the farmer’s property with my fellow animal rights activists, but somehow intruding the pigs’ domain.
One of them is separated from all the others. It stands right in the walkway, in front of me. A direct confrontation. Its gaze hits me. Wake up. As if the unidentifiable noises, intermingled with the eerie backdrop of the rhythmic drone of the army of rotor blades and chirping crickets, or the darkness, only pierced by the red headlamp and the blinking warning lights of the wind turbines hovering above me like enormous spaceships, weren’t already plunging one into a deeply somnambulistic state.
Two objects accompany the pig: a wreath filled with small things—perhaps feed—and another object that is purple, phallic, spiky, virus-like, strangely out of place. The pig seems somewhat familiar with it, it is showing considerably less interest in the object than I do.
I later drew the peculiar object from my memory. When exactly, I cannot recall. Was it immediately after the experience or a day or two later? The drawing has little resemblance to the objects I encountered during my initial visit. I search for the color—that should lead to some result. There aren’t many things that are purple in these facilities, I think, except for the markers used to designate the pigs for impending death. So, I search more specifically for enrichment materials. Yet, initially, it is difficult for me to envision such an aesthetic object in a place where galvanized steel chains1 are the end of the line.
I find “Luna.” Luna is a “Toy for Pigs”, a “Spieligel”2, enrichment material designed and patented “for” pigs. Luna. The moon goddess of the Romans, mythological phenomenon, Selene, patent protected. C.G. Jung once described—in reality or in my dreams—how since the Enlightenment, when science killed the old gods, we fetishize the gods back again in the shape of names for our inventions and discoveries. Hermes becomes a warship and a rocket, Apollo becomes the moon landing endeavor, Artemis follows suit, Nike now expands our bodies, Thor becomes radioactive, Mars a planet and vehicle, and Poseidon once again watches over the oceans.3
I devote myself further to Luna, work my way through the patent history, order a few copies, talk to my students about it in the seminar, rebuild it digitally as a 3D model, play through the generative design possibilities, become the designer of this phenomenon myself. What is this object? Is it a toy? “Toy”, Spiel-Zeug, play-thing in German, is a concept that needs to be unfolded. This “toy” is in a place where it is the only alternative. An alternative to another pig’s tail. Alternative to space and freedom.
The design was inspired by similar products and also inspired other designers to come up with ‘handy’ products for dogs, such as ‘Always upright shape for dog bones’4, ‘Pet toy product with integral treats receiving receptacles’5, ‘Device for use in training dogs’6, or the very similar looking ‘game ball’7.
But the toy at hand prevents the pigs from manipulating each other, even rendering themselves useless to the industry of which they are the main assets. So its function is evident. Is a useful toy still a toy? The cultural historian Johan Huizinga addressed these questions early on and writes in his well-known work “Homo Ludens”:
Play is a voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and the consciousness that it is “different” from “ordinary life”. 8
The levels and layers of the Magic Circle go deeper and deeper. The pigs and I explore, together, differently. In Huizinga’s perspective, playing is “pretending”—maybe the nibbled spines of the purple hedgehog are indeed pig tails. References to absent companions. Extremities of an entity that can serve as a reminder that even the pigs in factory farms do play, do experience joy, and do resist.
Galvanised steel chains are widely used by the industry as “environmental enrichment” for animals.
The toy is often referred to as “Spieligel” which, literally translated, means “toy hedgehog”. See eg. here https://www.anifarm.de/spieligel-luna-142-grun.html
This list of scientific discoveries and inventions is endless. Especially popular for weaponry, ships, or aircraft, such as the HMS Hermes, a Royal Navy aircraft carrier named after the Greek god Hermes, who was associated with travel, communication, and speed.
Patent US2005039696A1. Always upright shape for dog bones.
Patent WO9925183A1. Pet toy product with integral treats receiving receptacles.
Patent US745806A. Device in use for training dogs.
Patent GB1290777A. Game Ball.
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Reprint. International Library of Sociology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980 (1938). p. 28