0h!m1gas: biomimetic stridulation environment

Fig. 1.

0h!m1gas: biomimetic stridulation environment. © 2010 Kuai Shen Auson.

Oh!m1gas: biomimetic stridulation environment is an installation-based exploration of a socially responsible art form, drawing on sustainable organic materials (in this case, a live ant colony) and stimulating interspecific interactions. As artist Kuai Shen Auson first observed at home in Ecuador, ants represent a natural superorganism which stands out due to its emergent social structure and self-organization. They generate bottom-up structures in order to solve problems by means of a complex network of local interactions. Kuai Shen explores the social similarities and differences between humans and ants through four key areas: cybernetics, autopoiesis, self-organization, and emergence. In this piece, the activity of an ant colony is observed, archiving the ants’ movements and sounds inside a digital matrix. A pair of turntables constantly reacts to the changes that emerge from the colony (e.g., recruiting units for defense, task allocation when rebuilding the nest, organizing the harvesting of vegetation), thus spinning vinyl records that produce scratching sounds similar to the original stridulations of some ants. Leafcutter ants use the stridulatory organ, human DJ’s use the turntable: a reactive soundscape, which reveals the connection between scratching as an aesthetic expression created by human culture, and the stridulation phenomena of leafcutter ants as a modulation mechanism for communication. Kuai Shen believes we can learn from the way the ants construct their miniature ecosystems. Like them, we can apply an experimental design approach based on organic architecture, where sounds and physical interaction, instead of divided living spaces, promote and consolidate the interaction of life.

Fig. 2.

0h!m1gas: biomimetic stridulation environment. © 2010 Kuai Shen Auson.