As part of the 2021 edition of Interspecies Internet, Arachnophilia was invited to present on the amazing potentialities advanced through interspecies collaboration with spiders/webs. Joined by longtime collaborator, Arachnophilia community member and MIT professor of engineering Markus J. Buehler, as well as experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist Evan Ziporyn, Saraceno’s presentation considered the musicality of sonified spiders/webs as a mode of interspecies communication “tuned to a different note”.

In seeking to understand spiders as local communities across the world, like spider diviners in Somié, Cameroon have for thousands of years, we wonder: What would spiders say if we asked the right questions? What chords would they play in a concert of their own, with different chords and strings plucked?

A multidisciplinary, global coalition of visionaries such as Vint Cerf, one of the godfathers of the Internet, Peter Gabriel, Diana Reiss the cognitive psychologist and marine mammal scientist; and Neil Gershenfeld, who runs MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, Interspecies Internet recognizes the extraordinary possibilities presented by interspecies dialogue, promoting and probing possible means of communicating with nonhuman beings like whales, cows and spiders/webs towards sustainable futures.

Check out Arachnophilia’s presentation below, and watch 2021’s conference here.