Arachnodrone

Arachnodrone is an immersive multimedia installation and performance environment that presents a 3D model of a Cyrtophora citricola spider’s tropical tent-web, which serves as a modulating drone-harp with thousands of strings. The strands of the web are activated by the user’s movement through the web, and are based on proximity and principles of sympathetic resonance. The illuminated strings send data to self-adjusting oscillators, filters, and signal processors, which transform what we see into what we hear, generating melodies and chords.

Arachnodrone is a co-creation of sound artist Ian Hattwick, composer/visual artist Christine Southworth ’02, spider researcher Isabelle Su, PhD ’21, and composer and MIT CAST Faculty Director and Kenan Sahin (1963) Distinguished Professor, Music and Theater Arts Evan Ziporyn, inspired by collaborations with artist Tomás Saraceno and MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department Head and Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor in Engineering Markus J. Buehler.

The Arachnodrone concert premiered in November 2018 at the invitation of Saraceno for his exhibition ON AIR at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, with the program supported by Festival d’Automne à Paris.

This project emerged from myriad interactions between different disciplines in an effort to work together—and extend the boundaries of disciplinary knowledge and practices—toward new understandings of emergent human and nonhuman entanglements. The technical development of this musical instrument was inspired and made possible by the Spider Web Scan—a novel scientific apparatus and technique for generating precise 3D scans and digital models of complex spider webs. It was first created by Saraceno in 2009–2010 in collaboration with the TU Darmstadt, and more recently refined in Saraceno’s ongoing collaboration with the MIT Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics (led by Markus J. Buehler). Based closely on a tropical tent-web made by a semi-social South American Cyrtophora citricola spider, the work is not simply interdisciplinary, but quite literally an interspecies collaboration.

Arachnodrone Installation
On view: Fall 2023—Spring 2024
MIT Museum
314 Main Street, Cambridge, MA

Step into the intricate geometry of a spider’s web, digitally recreated and transformed into a sonic biome. A spider’s web is the inspiration and the musical instrument in this interdisciplinary—and interspecies—installation. Arachnodrone grew out of a fascination with and research into spiders and their webs. Using laser scans to digitally reproduce the spider’s web, and transforming the structure of the web into sound, it becomes an instrument where movement is manifested as complex harmonies.

A multimedia installation by: Isabelle Su, PhD ’21: virtual web modeling; Christine Southworth, ’02: visual images, projection design; Ian Hattwick, Christine Southworth, Isabelle Su and Evan Ziporyn: instrument and sound design. Inspired by collaborations with Tomás Saraceno, CAST Visiting Artist, and Markus Buehler, Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor in Engineering and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Arachnodrone is presented at the MIT Museum in collaboration with the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) as part of the CAST x MIT Museum partnership, a series of co-produced interdisciplinary arts installations and programs.

More information

Meet the Arachnodrone Artists
MIT Museum After Dark
November 9, 2023 / 6:00-9:00pm
MIT Museum
314 Main Street, Cambridge, MA

Arachnodrone Performance and Panel Discussion: “Sonification: Hearing Black Holes, Spiders, and Mycelium”
Cambridge Science Festival
September 26, 2023 / 6:00–7:30pm
MIT Museum, 314 Main Street, Cambridge, MA

A performance combining spider web sonification, electronics, and musical improvisation will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Evan Ziporyn and featuring Ian Hattwick, Lecturer in Music Technology; Erin Kara, Class of 1958 Career Development Assistant Professor of Physics; Kyle Keane, Lecturer in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Christine Southworth ’02; and Isabelle Su, PhD ’21.

Spider’s Canvas/Arachnodrone Live Performances
September 23, 2020
Starlight Square
Presented by Catalyst Collaborative@MIT

MIT Sounding Series
Spider’s Canvas/Arachnodrone Live Performances
February 16–18, 2019 
MIT Building W97
345 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA

More information

Spider’s Canvas/Arachnodrone
On view: February—June 2019
Live Demonstrations: April 16 and June 5, 2019
MIT.nano, MIT Building 12-3207
The Immersion Lab
60 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA

Spider’s Canvas
November 23, 2018
Palais de Tokyo, Paris

The concert premiered in November 2018 as part of Tomás Saraceno’s acclaimed carte blanche exhibition ON AIR at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, curated by Rebecca Lamarche Vadel, with the programme supported by Festival d’Automne, Paris.

Ian Hattwick an artist, researcher, and technology developer whose work focuses on the creation and use of digital systems for professional artistic performances. With a background in music composition and performance, Hattwick is particularly interested in the use of multimodal hardware systems to explore and facilitate social and embodied interaction.

Biography: MIT Music and Theater Arts
Website: ianhattwick.com

Christine Southworth ’02 is a multimedia composer based in Lexington, Massachusetts, dedicated to creating art born from a cross-pollination of sonic and visual ideas. Inspired by the intersections of technology and art, nature and machines, and music from cultures around the world, her work employs sounds and images from man and nature, ranging from Van de Graaff generators to honeybees, Balinese gamelan to seismic data, and volcanoes to mycelium networks.

Website: christinesouthworth.com
Social: Facebook | Instagram | Vimeo | Spotify | YouTube 

Isabelle Su, PhD ’21, is a graduate of the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics. Her research uses computational methods to understand and validate the mechanical properties of silk and spider webs that have been observed in biological experiments. Isabelle earned an MS in building engineering from the École Spéciale des Travaux Publics, Paris, and an MEng in high-performance structures at MIT.

Biography: MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Evan Ziporyn, Kenan Sahin (1963) Distinguished Professor of Music and Theater Arts and Faculty Director of the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology, is a composer/clarinetist who has forged an international reputation through his genre-defying, cross-cultural works and performances.

Biography: MIT Music and Theater Arts
Website: ziporyn.com
Social: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Isabelle Su, PhD ’21: virtual web modeling

Christine Southworth ’02: visual images, projection design 

Ian Hattwick, Christine Southworth, Isabelle Su, and Evan Ziporyn: instrument and sound design

Arachnodrone (formerly Spider’s Canvas) is part of a larger and ongoing artistic research project with CAST Visiting Artist Tomás Saraceno and Markus J. Buehler, MIT Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor in Engineering and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The live concert version of the project premiered in November 2018 as part of Tomás Saraceno’s acclaimed carte blanche exhibition ON AIR at Palais de Tokyo in Paris; it received its US premiere in MIT’s W97 Theater in February 2019.

MIT News:
Spider web music: An inspiring harmony of art and science

The Washington Post:
‘Spider’s Canvas/Arachnodrone’: A web of otherworldly music

WGBH Radio Interview:
Spiders Are the Partners in this ‘Inter-Species Collaboration’