Spider’s Canvas / Arachnodrone Articles

Beam of colored light
The live concert of Spider’s Canvas / Arachnodrone is a co-creation of composer and MIT CAST Faculty Director Evan Ziporyn, composer/visual artist Christine Southworth ’02, sound artist Ian Hattwick, spider researcher Isabelle Su, in collaboration with artist Tomás Saraceno, whose originating idea provides the basis of the concert, and MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department Head and McAfee Professor Markus Buehler. Credit: Aurelie Cenno.

Consider the Spiderweb

After nearly a decade, an interdisciplinary collaboration to model a 3D spider web leads to many surprising results The spiderweb is an everyday architecture—unmonumental and easily overlooked. Yet artists and scientists are working to unlock the secret of its complex … Continued

Isabelle Su: "I control what part of the web the viewer sees while Ian Hattwick plays with the hearing distance. All the fibers within this hearing distance (in blue/white) are sonified while the fibers outside of this range (in green/brown) do not produce sound. Evan Ziporyn and Christine Southworth improvise with the web instrument, building on Ian's sound, with Evan on EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument) and Christine on electric guitar with EBow."

A Three-Dimensional Spider Web Soundscape Comes to Life

Spider’s Canvas was performed February 16-18, 2019 at the MIT Building W97 Main Theater. Visit sounding.mit.edu for more information. Following the live performances, the piece was displayed in the MIT.nano Building 12 in Spring 2019.     Spider’s Canvas / … Continued

A complex irregular network of many black fibers in a white gallery space.
Tomás Saraceno, 14 Billions, 2010. Credit: Studio Tomás Saraceno.

Saraceno: Conversations on Biomimicry

When asked who the audience was for his work during a public lecture here at MIT, Tomás Saraceno replied, “spiders!” Here we explore the artist’s ongoing interest in biomimicry –- the creative application of natural systems and processes towards human solutions -– through the work of several MIT researchers. Like Saraceno – whose aerial installations take inspiration from spider webs, soap bubbles, neural circuits, and cosmology – faculty Markus Buehler, Neri Oxman, and Dörthe Eisele are similarly interested in harnessing the power of nature to create new materials for a more sustainable future.