OFF: Thai elephant orchestra

[Nick Medford]

On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 12:43:22 -0400, Paul Mather <paul at GROMIT.DLIB.VT.EDU>
wrote:


>This reminds me of a segment I saw on (I think) _60 Minutes_ where two
>Russian satirical artists were selling paintings to the modern art
>world done by Thai elephants.  What was really neat was that these
>elephants were retired work elephants, and the Russians had set up a
>foundation to direct the money raised from the sales to pay for their
>upkeep (and the upkeep of their handler).  So, in effect, the
>elephants were "working" for themselves. :-)  (They would likely
>otherwise die from neglect.)  The Russians said it did not take very
>long to re-train each elephant to paint, and that each had its own
>individual style.
>
>As with the monkeys, the art world raved over the paintings.  To be
>fair, folks still raved even after being told the artist was an
>elephant, which I guess is fine.  After all, where is it written that
>expressive and emotive brush strokes are the sole domain of human
>artists?... :-)

Or the creation of music... see

http://www.mulatta.org/Thaielephantorch.html

Nick