When you come across something that is so incredibly interesting it stops you from doing anything except going back and reading and scrolling and reading. Not sure how I found it but the Arachnophilia project by Tomás Saraceno and his studio and collaborators is incredible.
It seems to be a series of projects, spanning years and covering many different things relating to Spider/Web – written like that because the link between a spider and its web seems to be more ingrained and integral than most people think.
“The spider’s world is one of vibration. Essentially blind, the web-building spider creates an image of the world through the vibrations it sends and receives through the web, which also functions as an organic and specialised instrument for transmitting these seismic signals. The spider/web is thus considered a material extension of the spider’s own senses, and—some argue—of its mind.”
https://arachnophilia.net/sonifying-the-web
It’s quite hard to explain all the facets of the Arachnophilia project. (there are bloody loads!) But what I was most drawn to is the 3D mapping of the webs. It is, understandably, a very hard thing to do, and something that I think no one had done before. From figuring out how to do it they learnt about how different species live side by side and build these networks of shared information.
From these maps they created large 3D structures for people to interact with.
I like the analogies they make on the site between webs / networks / society / the cosmic web. It’s hard to explain but it’s super interesting.
(Also, kinda relevant – not relevant I just found an amazing spider silk thing which I’ll write up about here very shortly!)