World of Webs Philip Ball Finds Himself Caught up in Artworks Woven by Thousands of South American Spiders

ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR World of webs Philip Ball finds himself caught up in artworks woven by thousands of South American spiders.

he famous warning never to work through interlacing, glittering web fibres, Saraceno has Tomás Saraceno’s 2016 with animals or children seems not harbours of nebulae and hybrid clusters of worked with many work Arachno Concert, to have reached Tomás Saraceno. galaxies appear, introducing microcosms of scientists and with Arachne (Nephila TThe Argentina-born, Berlin-based artist cooperation”. Visitors are encouraged to lie scientific insti- senegalensis), Cosmic embraces the unpredictability and scene- down and look up at this silken cosmos. tutions over the Dust (Porus Chondrite) stealing capacity of orb-weaving spiders. The N. clavipes installation, meanwhile, is years. He has held and the Breathing Thousands of the arachnids are his collabo- an elaborate symphony. The tiny meteoritic residencies at the Ensemble. rators in a forthcoming exhibition at the particles — sourced in cooperation with National Centre Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art. the Berlin Museum for Natural History — for Space Studies in Paris and the Massa- Visitors will wander amid more than mingle with dust in the air to become part chusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for 190 square metres of webs woven by of the sonic landscape. Their movements are Art, Science and Technology in Cambridge. Parawixia bistriata, an orb-weaving spider tracked by video and magnified on a screen, In 2015, at the Centre for Contemporary native to several South American countries. while a custom-built algorithm translates Art of the Nanyang Technological Univer- A second space hosts an “arachno concert”. the trajectories into low-frequency sound, sity in Singapore, he staged an installation For this, the web of another indigenous sent through 24 loudspeakers. Dust, webs, called Arachnid Orchestra Jam Sessions. Web

orb-weaver, Nephila clavipes, is connected spiders and visitors’ incidental sounds are vibrations made by spiders were amplified 2016. SARACENO, TOMÁS STUDIO to sensors that pick up the movements woven into an acoustic tapestry. into sound as human musicians improvised of plucked threads. These vibrations are Vibrations of web silk help spiders to alongside. Saraceno regards each web as a broadcast through loudspeakers, stimulat- locate prey using the sonic clues picked up kind of impromptu, unique string section ing the spiders’ movements in a feedback by sensors in their feet (B. Mortimer et al. played by spiders.

loop. Meanwhile, acoustic waves from the J. R. Soc. Interface 13, 20160341; 2016). As well as creating an ethereal sonic AND E., BERLIN. PHOTOGRAPHY: THE ARTIST COURTESY loudspeakers propel “cosmic dust” — fine The web itself may be designed to enhance landscape, that project exemplified Sara- particles of chondrite meteorites — into the directional information from these ceno’s broader objective: exploring cohabi- the air, their dancing motions picked out by vibrations. tation between humans and other animals. beams of light. Saraceno wants to suggest a Saraceno has ambitions beyond the Although the webs in his exhibitions are not conceptual link between spider webs and the aesthetic. His studio in Berlin is equipped necessarily like those that festoon gardens “cosmic web” of matter — galaxies, nebulae, with a laboratory that houses 300 arach- and houses, spiders make gossamer crea- dust and dark matter — that permeates the nids. For this exhibition, he is collaborat- tions all around us, often unobserved. “The Universe, a topic he has discussed with astro- ing with two scientists — arachnologist aesthetic operation here,” he says, is to bring physicists. Martín Ramírez at the Bernadino Rivada- spiders’ “presence to the foreground”. On The social behaviour of P. bistriata is via Argentinian Museum of Natural Sci- visiting Saraceno’s studio, the French soci- complex. The spiders live in a colony; during ences in Buenos Aires and biologist Alex ologist Bruno Latour declared that he would the day, they build a communal hive-like Jordan from the Department of Collective stop sweeping away the cobwebs in his own nest. At dusk, they add individual webs Behaviour at the Max Planck Institute for house. If Saraceno has his way, Latour linked into a network, for capturing prey. As Ornithology in Konstanz, Germany — to won’t be alone in extending greater respect they mature, the spiders start to hunt alone. understand how the spiders make their to these miniature universes of vibration, Thus Saraceno’s installation is very much collective decisions. sound and light. ■ How to Entangle a group project, built from an estimated the Universe in a Saraceno and his 40 million or so individual threads. He calls Spider’s Web studio have developed Philip Ball is a writer based in London. His each a “trace in the air”, like the trajectory of a Buenos Aires Museum pioneering methods most recent books are The Water Kingdom grain of dust. As he explains, visitors first see of Modern Art for visualizing com- and Patterns in Nature. “only faint details”. Then, “as they navigate Starting 6 April. plex 3D webs. e-mail: [email protected]

314 | NATURE | VOL 543 | 16 MARCH©2 0201717 Ma c|m iCORRECTEDllan Publishers Li m i30ted, MARCHpart of Spri n2017ger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT

CLARIFICATION After Nature went to press, the name of the exhibition reviewed in the Books & Arts article ‘World of webs’ by Philip Ball (Nature 543, 314; 2017) was changed to How to Entangle the Universe in a Spider’s Web.