Kuaishen Auson: 0h!m1gas: A Biomimetic Stridulation Environment
Title:
- 0h!m1gas: A Biomimetic Stridulation Environment
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Artist Statement:
Ant colony, 2 turntables with Arduino stepper motors, video projection, flat screen for data analysis visualization, surround sound system set (5.1), 2 digital video cameras for motion capture, 2 microphones for audio capture, 2 computers with 2 licenses of Cycling 74’s Max/Jitter, 2-4 UV spot lights for illumination of the ant’s nest.
0h!m1gas is a biomimetic stridulation environment based on the activity of an ant colony, which is being video and audio surveilled, transforming the ants’ social interaction into information that is translated into turntable rotation. Thus, the ants become DJs of their own cybernetic ecology. The system itself is a sociobiological sound reactive space, which reveals the connection between scratching as an aesthetical expression, created by human culture, and the natural stridulation phenomena produced by ants as a communication method. Ants represent a natural super organism that can be sensed and understood as a colony of hyper instrumental entities generating sound waves, bits of frequencies and musical beats if we analyze and channel their movements and stridulations. Maybe there is a way to create a feedback system and communicate with ants. The ultimate goal would be to explore a possible cybernetic playground in order to study the ants’ response to the vibrations and sound compositions they create. 0h!m1gas is a biomimetic stridulation environment with a life of its own, extending and transforming the self organization in ants while opening our human senses to a new form of emerging music.
