...
AnarcoAracnoAnacroArcano
Web(s) of Life
Spiders in Motion, Rainy Commotion
Aerocene Newspaper II
Oceans of Air
From Arachnophobia to Arachnophilia
Particular Matter(s)
Tomás Saraceno: Aria
Event Horizon
Songs for the Air
Aerocene — Movements for the Air, Munich Landing
PALAIS #28: ON AIR
Marble Breeze
How to Entangle the Universe in a Spider Web
Aerographies
Our Interplanetary Bodies
Aerosolar Journeys
Notes on Aerocene
Aerocene
Flying Plaza Work Journal 2012 – 2016
Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions
Aerocene. Exhibition Road
163,000 Light Years
Becoming Aerosolar
Aerocene Newspaper I
Cloud Specific
Cosmic Jive: The Spider Sessions
Cloud Cities
14 Billions (Working Title)
CLOUD CITIES / AIR-PORT-CITY
SPIDER JAM SESSION WITH SILVIA BOLOGNESI, MILAN (IT)
On the occasion of Tomás Saraceno’s the Weaving The Cosmos hosted by Bulgari at Ulrico Hoepli’s Planetarium during the 2019 Milan Design Week, music performer Silvia Bolognesi was invited to participate to a jam session with the spiders/webs. Silvia Bolognesi is a double bass virtuoso and is considered as one of the most daring and interesting personalities of the Italian jazz scene. Her improvisation skills enter in dialogue with the spider/webs, transforming the installation into a collective musical instrument through which terrestrial and interplanetary tremors resound.
ARACHNID ORCHESTRA. JAM SESSION #2 WITH BANI HAYKAL, SINGAPORE CCA
As part of Tomás Saraceno’s Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions solo exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), NTU Singapore in 2015 curated by Ute Meta Bauer and Anca Rujoiu, Saraceno invited a number of musicians and performers to enter into an acoustic dialogue with spider/webs, mediated through the instruments of his Arachnid Orchestra. These encounters took the shape of three Jam Sessions. Jam Session #2: Variations on Hello was performed by musician Bani Haykal. Introduced by arachnologist Joseph K. H. Koh, Jam Session #1 incorporated a set of materials to transmit vibrations to the spiders, in an attempt to investigate whether specific frequencies and rhythmic patterns would trigger a response and produce a feedback mechanism between spiders and humans.
ARACHNID ORCHESTRA. JAM SESSION #3 WITH JOYCE BEETUAN KOH AND ETIENNE TURPIN, SINGAPORE CCA
As part of Tomás Saraceno’s Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions solo exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), NTU Singapore in 2015 curated by Ute Meta Bauer and Anca Rujoiu, Saraceno invited a number of musicians and performers to enter into an acoustic dialogue with spider/webs, mediated through the instruments of his Arachnid Orchestra. These encounters took the shape of three Jam Sessions. Jam Session #3: Away We Go was developed collaboratively by musician Joyce Betuan Koh and philosopher Etienne Turpin.
COSMIC JIVE THE SPIDER SESSIONS, VILLA CROCE (IT)
The result of a long-term collaboration with biologists, musicians, architects and electronic engineers to study the sounds and vibrations produced by spiders in their web, Cosmic Jive The Spider Sessions was a solo exhibition by Tomás Saraceno in 2014 at Villa Croce, Italy. For this exhibition, Saraceo developed early prototypes of the spider web sonification devices: highly sensitive piezo microphones that could pick up the vibrations that Nephila keniensis and Cyrtophora citricola spiders send and receive through their webs.
SPIDER SALON, HAUS DER KULTUREN DER WELT, BERLIN
A Spider Salon with Tomás Saraceno and Molly Nesbit in an encounter with an Eratigena atrica (Tegenaria atrica) spider in a sonified web in an open carbon frame. This Spider Salon took place at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin in 2014, as part of the event, ‘’A Matter Theater’ (2014).
SPIDER SALON JAM SESSION WITH TOMOMI ADACHI
In September 2016, An early Spider Salon initiated in Tomás Saraceno’s Berlin studio, Berlin-based vocalist and composer Tomomi Adachi – renowned for his improvised music with voice, live electronics and self-made instruments – was invited to imagine an acoustic interspecies dialogue with a chorus of Cyrtophora citricola spiders, a Nephila senegalensis spider, and a percussive ensemble of Lycosidae spiders.
SPIDER SALON, STUDIO RECORDING WITH EVAN ZIPORYN
Head of Music and Theater Arts, inaugural Director of the Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST) and clarinettist/composer Evan Ziporyn visited Studio Tomás Saraceno in Rummelsburg, Berlin in September 2015, to speak about spiders, art and the musical possibilities that resonate in and between spiders, webs, silk and humans. During this visit, Ziporyn engaged in an interspecies jam session with a duet of vibrating Cyrtophora citricola spiders in their shared, complex three-dimensional tent web. This encounter is described in the book: Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions (2017)
ARACHNID ORCHESTRA. JAM SESSION #1 WITH BRIAN O’REILLY, SINGAPORE CCA
As part of Tomás Saraceno’s Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions solo exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), NTU Singapore in 2015 curated by Ute Meta Bauer and Anca Rujoiu, Saraceno invited a number of musicians and performers to enter into an acoustic dialogue with spider/webs, mediated through the instruments of his Arachnid Orchestra. These encounters took the shape of three Jam Sessions. Jam Session #1 was with Brian O’Reilly, performing with a number of instruments which offered different ways of interacting with the sounds generated by the spider.
RELATED
Arachnid Jam Sessions. Recordings
Performers: Cyrtophora citricola, Nephila pilipes, and Brian O’Reilly.
Instruments: Tomás Saraceno, Hybrid solitary, semi-social instrument ESO 137-001 built by: one Nephila kenianensis, one week and a pair of Cyrtophora citricola, four weeks, 2015, spidersilk, carbon fibre, piezo, microphones, amplifier.
Modular synthesiser, electro-acoustic contrabass, electronics, gongs, and bowed cymbals.
Courtesy Cyrtophora citricola, Nephila pilipes, and Brian O’Reilly (United States /Singapore) musician and Lecturer, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. © NTU CCA Singapore, Studio Tomás Saraceno, and contributors
Jam Session, 7 November 2016, NTU CCA Singapore.
Performers: Cyrtophora citricola, Heteropoda venatoria and Bani Haykal.
Instruments: Tomás Saraceno, Hybrid solitary, semi-social instrument ESO 137-001 built by: one Nephila kenianensis, one week and a pair of Cyrtophora citricola, four weeks, 2015, spidersilk, carbon fibre, piezo, microphones, amplifier.
Tomás Saraceno, Hybrid solitary semi-social musical instrument SSA22-HCM1 built by: one Nephila clavipes, three weeks and three Cyrtophora citricola, ten weeks, 2015, spidersilk, carbon fibre, laser, vibrometer, amplifier.
Tomás Saraceno, Hybrid solitary semi-social musical instrument HDF 4-473.0 built by: one Nephila clavipes, four weeks and a pair of Cyrtophora citricola, seven weeks, 2015, spidersilk, carbon fibre, piezo microphones, amplifier.
Tomás Saraceno in collaboration with Dr Roland Mühlethaler, Drum-set M33, NGC 598 for a vibrational ensemble, 2015, laser, vibrometer, membrane, piezo elements, amplifier.
Courtesy Cyrtophora citricola, Heteropoda venatoria and Bani Haykal (Singapore) artist. © NTU CCA Singapore, Studio Tomás Saraceno, and contributors
#3 Jam Session Away We Go, 2 December 2016, NTU CCA Singapore.
Performers: Cyrtophora citricola, Heteropoda venatoria, Joyce Beetuan Koh (concept, music, composition, and direction) & Etienne Turpin (text), Nadine Ng, and Cheryl Ho.
Instruments: Tomás Saraceno in collaboration with Odysseus Klisouras, Aeolic instrument for a lighter-than-air ensemble, 2015, air stream, spidersilk, carbon fibre poles, webcam, video tracking.
Violins.
Courtesy Cyrtophora citricola, Heteropoda venatoria, Joyce Beetuan Koh (Singapore) musician and Vice Dean, Interdisciplinary Studies, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), Singapore, and Etienne Turpin (Canada/Indonesia) philosopher and Founding Director of anexact office. © NTU CCA Singapore, Studio Tomás Saraceno and contributors
Sounding the Air draws inspiration from the phenomenon of spider ‘ballooning’, a behaviour in which some spiders use airborne dispersal to move between locations. They release several silk threads into the air which carries them away on updrafts of winds. Individuals or colonies are able to travel long distances on those aerial kites of gossamer silk, buoyed by thermal updrafts and electrostatic force. Those flights allow us to speculate about the possibility of a collective aerial flight and of interspecies attunement and collaboration with the forces of the atmosphere.
Aeolic Instrument for a Lighter-than-air Ensemble
On the occasion of Tomás Saraceno’s the Weaving The Cosmos hosted by Bulgari at Ulrico Hoepli’s Planetarium during the 2019 Milan Design Week, music performer Silvia Bolognesi was invited to participate to a jam session with the spiders/webs. Silvia Bolognesi is a double bass virtuoso and is considered as one of the most daring and interesting personalities of the Italian jazz scene. Her improvisation skills enter in dialogue with the spider/webs, transforming the installation into a collective musical instrument through which terrestrial and interplanetary tremors resound.
Spider Salon – Jam Session with Tomomi Adachi, Studio Tomás Saraceno, 2016