Perhaps art begins with the animal

Perhaps art begins with the animal, at least with the animal that carves out a territory and constructs a house (both are correlative, or even one and the same, in what is called a habitat). The territory-house system transforms a number of organic functions – sexuality, procreation, aggression, feeding. But this transformation does not explain the appearance of the territory and the house; rather it is the other way around: the territory implies the emergence of pure sensory qualities, of sensibilia that cease to be merely functional and become expressive features, making possible a transformation of functions.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, 'Percept, Affect, Concept' in Animals (Whitechapel Gallery Ventures Limited, 2016) p. 112