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DoggyCorps is a collective storytelling project that seeks to document the voices of New York City dogs, as narrated by their owners, sharing stories of daily habits and challenges in an urban environment. DoggyCorps is an effort to further connect people and animals under an umbrella of shared experience.
Round one of DoggyCorps took the form of a sunny Saturday morning in Prospect Park’s off-leash area. Here’s one of the dogs I met:
Max the Bulldog:
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For round two (and three, and four…), I fanned out across New York City in an effort to diversify my interview subjects. I also structured the interviews with questions about the dog’s experience in the City (versus asking owners to simply introduce their dog in the imagined voice of their dog).
This constraint is echoed by Jake Barton, ITP alum and chief designer for the Storycorps project.He says, “Just giving visitors an open mike is the least kind thing you can do. We are asking for people’s experiences, but that doesn’t relieve us of the responsibility to share a narrative with the visitor.”
Finally, I animate each audio piece with hand-drawn, frame-by-frame sequences so we can both hear and see the dogs share their stories.
Stay tuned.