"The Cow of Tomorrow" describes an extreme future use of animals taking notions of utility and domestication to a logical end.

A tiny turbine is implanted in an animal's artery to harness power through its blood flow. With its long history of industrial domestication, the dairy cow is a natural candidate to be fitted with the blood flow energy system.

Through biotechnological processes, the dairy cow is heavily re-designed as a new type of utility animal, which is designed entirely to satisfy human needs by producing both milk and energy.

This project explores how emerging technologies facilitate man's attempt to increase our control over nature, and if that would be for the better or worse.

Design Team

Project concept and design by Paul Gong

Photography by Lydia Chang

Story by Debbie Ding

Booklet by Willa Hsiang

The scale model of the re-designed cow.

Testing the vascular turbine.

Details of the re-designed dairy cow.

New timeline of the re-designed cow.

The two big hearts are re-designed precisely for producing more energy from a cow's blood flow. They're connected together and both bigger than a normal dairy cow's heart. There is an additional artery allowing the vascular turbine to harness power.

Exhibition at RCA show 2015

Exhibition at RCA show 2015

Exhibition at RCA show 2015

Exhibition at RCA show 2015

The Cow of Tomorrow, Today —The fictional short story of "The Cow of Tomorrow" written by Debbie Ding

Till that day she hadn't realized how soundproof her car was.

To get into the compound for her first day of work, Hannah had to drive past a row of protesters encamped outside the security booth. They were activated the moment she drove through the gates, opportunistically leaping to their feet.

There were the heavily muffled sounds of hands flapping her vehicle. Someone stuck a badly photoshopped image of a mutated cow in front of her, with the words "WE ARE NOT SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS" printed in bold next to it. She would have laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, if it wasn't her car that they were beating on.

She had been told to expect this when she went in for the hiring interview at Farnon Corp, but it still seemed unreal. Unreal that several years of a costly education in Dairy Veterinary Medicine had finally come to this moment. Unreal to be heckled by animal rights activists even thought she thought of herself as the biggest animal lover ever. Unreal to be finally driving into Farnon and through row upon row of dairy units, these gleaming vats of alumnium and steel, which housed what was probably the most ambitious dairy experiment in the world.

The realities of the job market was such that the brightest and the best graduates were bound to end up in the big corporations like Farnon.

She had to look at the map on her phone to find the unit as there were nearly a hundred different units within the compound, each housing dozens of cows. There was nothing to distinguish Unit 32B from any other unit, besides the plain numbers emblazoned on them like bookshelves in a vast library.

The roads within the huge gated compound were largely empty, but from within each unit one could hear the buzzing of machinery. She had expected to hear more sounds of animals, but it was strangely silent.

Hannah parked her car in front of the building labeled 32B.

A man waved from the window of the building's office and came briskly running out to meet her.

"Thanks so much for coming down so quickly. I'm Adam Henton, the manager for unit 32B. Call me Henton. I think we've got a left displaced abomasum on our hands, pretty routine problem. You're look new?"

"Yes, I'm Hannah Ruby, the new sector vet for Farnon. I'll be replacing Dr Wight."

"What, just for a while? Where's the old bag gone to?"

"Actually, he's… left this position. I don't know much about it, I was only told that he wanted to explore other opportunities."

"Oh finally! I'm not ruddy surprised!" Henton snorted. "The kind of things James has had to fix up here!"

Catching sight of the worried expression on Hannah's face, Henton seemed suddenly self-conscious of what he was saying.

"Oh, no, I'm sorry." Henton said. "Its not that bad around here really. Some peculiarities, you know, what with this kind of modified breed, and the occasional problem with cannulas and turbines. You'll get used to it."

"Its fine." Hannah said. "I'm excited to be working for Farnon Farms, really, and I like a veterinary challenge." She smiled at Henton. "Obviously I've been well acquainted with the unusual biology of Farnon Cows, although I haven't had time to read through all of Dr Wight's files for your cows. Let's look at your sick cow first and you can give me a rundown of the entire herd's history later - we could also do a full herd check if you need?"

"Sure. Let me take you to her."

"There she is."

The cow was standing pressed up against the corner, with a weak expression on her face.

"A day or two ago she went off her feed. Last night the night crew found her crouched by the edge of the pit away from the other cows, almost if she had been pushed there by the alley scraper, except that the scrapers are programmed to never push a cow over, so I suspected it might be yet another case of LDA. We called you first thing in the morning."

"Is this new? I've not seen this design before!" Hannah pointed at the alley scraper.

"Haven't you worked at a big facility like this before?" Henton looked surprised at her. "I reckon this is pretty much industry standard, all of our free-standing stalls at Farnon are fitted with state-of-the-art automatic alley scrapers."

"I did most of my assessments in small family owned farms…" Hannah began.

"But Farnon is technically a family-owned farm too… just that it has expanded a lot!"

"Yes, but Dr Farnon…"

"What he does is no different. Except that he's much more personally involved in making his cows work better and better. With the turbines, cows make a great energy source. Now I'm no apologist, but you can see here that they've got more than ample space in here to stretch out. They're protected from the elements, are fed a completely balanced diet, sitting there ready for whenever they want to eat it, and they sleep on water beds at night. They can meander about within the unit as they please and socialise with one another!"

"Yes, I guess it wasn't quite what I expected." Hannah admitted, biting her lip.

"Forgive me if I sound naïve. But they don't go outside!"

"But they don't have to! That's why they've made it so great on the inside! The design is so slick; the things that agriculture engineers and designers come up with these days! Don't believe everything you hear from those activists outside who want to tell you about the animal cruelty inside here!" Henton chortled, as he bent down to point out to her the mechanism for the scrapers, rigged with low profile angled scrapers with tough yet extremely flexible rubber blades.

"Make no mistake of it, her condition certainly wasn't anything to do with the alley scraper, these alley scrapers were designed to minimise the bother they cause to the herd itself."

"Yes, I can see that. I mean, this design is actually better than I thought it would be…"

"I'll tell you one thing, and that is no expense is ever spared for these girls. Like they say, a happy, healthy and comfortable herd is a profitable herd…"

"That's great for me to hear as a vet, but I do understand that there is a recurrent LDA problem in your herds?"

"Yes, well, despite our efforts these cows have always had a higher than usual incidence of RDA and LDA." Henton sighed.

Hannah took out her stethoscope and pressed it to the cow, and listened intently whilst flicking it on its side. Then she closely examined the wider abdominal area of the cow, which was still dwarfed by the size of the cow's chest.

"I'm supposing that the issue is that Farnon's cows tend to be bigger and deeper chested because of their double hearts, allowing more room for the abomasum to float into?"

"Exactly."

Hannah took out a file and flipped through it. "I see in my notes that Dr Wight usually prescribed the roll and oral method… I've got to say - that sounds pretty conservative."

"What else did you expect? Surgery?"

"Roll and Toggle pin. What about rolling and then toggling the abomasum into place with pins?"

"I think I had this debate with Dr Wight before when he first started here, but I've got strict directives. Dr Farnon doesn't like that method.

"What do you mean, he doesn't like it? Isn't this quite a standard procedure?"

"You'll be surprised, but even a man like him doesn't want any other invasive interventions done to his cows if possible. As it is, rolling already puts the cows under severe stress, as you know, from their sheer size."

"Right… so he's happy to breed a cow with two hearts, and to install turbines in their arteries but doesn't approve of toggle pins to hold their abomasums from moving out of place."

"It might sound idiosyncratic, but he likes his cows to be as natural as possible. And I'm just following orders."

"Right, if that's what you want, we'll just float and coax her abomasum back into position by rolling her on the ground."

A few herdsmen were called in to assist in the process, in which the cow was rested on her left side so that her abomasum could float back up into its physiological position. It took more men than Hannah expected, because of the sheer size of the cow's enhanced chest.

After the cow was finally sat, forced down to the ground, the men got up. There was a momentary silence in the room.

"These cows, they're very quiet aren't they?" Hannah said suddenly. "I haven't heard the usual sounds I'd expect from a usual herd."

"Actually, these cows have a larger lung size than usual cows, so on the contrary they'd be capable of making louder sounds if they wanted to! But it just seems that their nature is to tend towards being more shy than most other dairy breeds. But in any case, cows have no need for words."

"Sure, the cow has no command of words and maybe it has no need for words, but I guess it also means the cow has no defense against being reshaped by us humans and our desires."

"Are you sure you're the vet? Because you're beginning to sound like those crazies outside!" Henton joked.

Hannah laughed. "Don't mind me, I'm just thinking of the cow's best interests."
A few more vigorous shakes, tymphanic taps and checks were done before Hannah could declare the cow fit to stand up again.

Soon after being rolled and put back onto its feet, the cow looked at Hannah, and soundlessly walked off and began picking at the hay for the first time in days.
"I guess that's a good sign." Hannah said.

The cow lifted its head up and for the first time, looked straight at her, as if to thank her for her help.

Hannah looked into the eyes of the cow, wondering what on earth it might be thinking or feeling. That was the problem with cows. They could never be able to tell you what they were feeling, and you could never assume that you knew what they were thinking. They were simply great big black pools of mystery. There was no way of telling…

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