This artist lived for three days as a goat in a herd. With grass for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It sounds useless, but it is actually very thought provoking

London, England, 2015. While looking at his niece's dog, the young Briton Thomas Thwaites suddenly has a thought: what would it be like to go through life as a dog? Sleeping, eating, playing; a dog does not worry about the future. A dog has no need to develop or to express himself. He doesn't need to turn his life into art. A dog always lives in the 'now' and that looks simple for the troubled person, with his modern inconveniences. So simple that it makes you yealous.

A desire is born, what follows is a serious investigation. Which animal Thomas would like to be? A Danish shaman advises him to choose the animal that is closest to him. It eventually becomes a goat. Thomas feels a kinship with those animals. It reminds him of his youth when he tried to eat the leaves of a houseplant with his hands on his back.

But then: he had to figure out how goats live. Is there some kind of awareness? What does a goat eat and how does he process that food? Hundreds of questions are bubbling to the surface. He visits scientists, philosophers and farmers to find out how a goat is built and how it spend its days. After carefully examining all mental and physical aspects (as far as possible), he moves on to the next phase: he builds a 'goat suit'. With a corset consisting of artificial prostheses and a helmet, he finally leaves in September 2015 for the ultimate test: he is going to life between the goats.

The locals of the village Wolfenschiessen cannot believe their eyes, but he is really out there. In the evening he sleeps in the stable between the herd. During the day he eats grass. He keeps it going for three days, the prostheses on which he walks hurts like hell. The grass he eats literally comes out his nose. However, the experiment hasn’t failed. Thomas' consciousness has been broadened. According to the farmer who allowed him to live among his goats, the herd even accepted him in those few days.

If the goats gave Thomas a real feeling of belonging to the community, did they even see him for a goat? And did he even feel like a goat himself? Answers to these questions can be read in the book Goatman. How I Took a Holiday from Being Human (2016) by this British designer and artist. In an infectious mix of personal experiences and philosophical thought experiments he reports on his obscure research. In summary, he writes:

I have tried to become a goat to escape the existential fear inherent in being human. The project was an exploration of how close modern technology can bring us in fulfilling an ancient dream of man: adopting the characteristics of other animals.

You could describe the work of Thwaites as adventurous, frivolous and speculative. I would not call him a classical artist. Not even a regular designer. Perhaps a seventeenth-century scientist who builds his own research instruments, or even crazier: a descendant of Monty Python.

Thwaites describes himself as “a designer (of a more speculative sort), interested in technology, science, futures research & etc.” Especially that 'etc.' is typical. As if he wants to indicate that his curiosity is in fact limitless, that there are actually no words for what fascinates him. Thwaites is investigative, deliberately naïve in his questions and therefore nautical in nature: always in for an adventure, never afraid to get out on his own and squeeze himself into uncomfortable positions.

In this way he is closely linked to the classic image of the pre-modern scientist who dares to ask crazy questions and experimentally explores the world around him. It wasn't surprising that he won the Ig Nobel Prize in 2016 for his artistic-biological research. Ig Nobel Prize (Ignoble stands for 'non-noble', 'unworthy') is a parody of the Nobel Prize and is awarded to studies that you first have to laugh with, but afterwards are also very thought provoking.

The Toaster Project, an attempt to build an electric toaster from scratch.

What is so attractive about the work of Thwaites is the playful seriousness. At a time when the artistic imagination must again be 'socially engaged' and 'of influence', Thwaites' apparent naivety and frivolity is a relief between work in which the seriousness remarkably often seems to have the upper hand. And that is very 'useful' in confusing times. Thwaites pretends to be a 'nutty professor', but he knows very well how he can capture a large abstract world in one image. He first did this by reducing globalization and capitalism back to the production process of a toaster and he now did it again by being the Goatman for three days.

Thwaites' transformation bears witness to the desire to change into something non-human, and thereby, as it were, to disappear into life. The image that the Brit puts down is striking. It’s clear mirror: hilarious, but also moving. Because whoever looks at the Goatman actually looks at himself. At least, at a humorous enlargement of it. In a clumsy and completely artificial way - with the help of all kinds of technical extensions - we try to be a part of nature. However, man stands staggering, full of discomfort in nature. He is part of it, but also mentally alienated from it. His consciousness is split.

Thwaites' initial desire, in his own words, to 'take a holiday from being human' ultimately leads to existential self-examination. What makes a person a human being and not a goat? And: why it is so difficult for us to live 'in the moment', while in the rest of the animal kingdom that question will never arise?

A dog knows from birth how to walk and eat, a honeybee flies without thinking about flowers and nectar. But we? We are actually born prematurely in comparison to other mammals: in our first years of life we are completely dependent on the culture in which we are born.

The result is a paradox: the weakness of the human species is also immediately his greatest strength. It is precisely because of our indeterminacy, our lack of precision, our open attitude, we have greater freedom with regard to our instincts and needs. We can suppress, ignore or postpone it.We take for granted, but it is something to cherish...