Jen Valender

Have you ever seen cat videos like this?

Cats and the internet are a match made in heaven. Humans could not be more obsessed with our online icons. We scroll through endless cat content, but what does the digital world look like through a cat’s eyes? Watch cats from Ainoshima Island, Japan, fondly called ‘Cat Heaven Island’, view videos of themselves for the first time on digital screens - creating a meme within the cat meme. Strike your best cat pose and flip the lens to experience the same footage in ‘cat vision’. Informed by animal sensory perception research from the Stuart-Fox Lab at the University of Melbourne, tune into a more feline perspective and explore a shared language of curiosity and play.

How does "cat vision" differ from human vision?

BIOGRAPHY

Jen Valender (AUS/NZ) is an Australasian artist who was born in Aotearoa New Zealand and is based in Naarm Melbourne, Australia. She creates performative encounters on and with the landscape that raise questions about the relationship between art and the natural world. Through film, performance, sculpture, and sound artworks, Valender explores the ways in which art may be used to investigate and navigate human and nonhuman connections.

Interactive software development for Cat Island by Willow Truscott.

Camera Operator & Spirit Animal: Dr D.

With thanks to Professor Devi Stuart-Fox, School of Biosciences and the Stuart-Fox Lab at the University of Melbourne.