Abstract
Since 2007, Tomás Saraceno has been developing a project that aims to break out of the anthropocentric understanding of communication and coexistence with other animal organisms. In this article, I point out the importance of using modern visualization technologies to analyze and investigate the structure of communication frameworks and their modalities in the animal world, specifically using the example of spiders. The visualization of what is normally invisible to the eye and inaudible to the ear rearticulates the realm of the visible and the audible, which Saraceno then uses for art-critical purposes, with the aim of forming a new type of posthuman attunement to the environment and other animal species. The condition for outlining and articulating Saraceno’s artistic vision is the use of the latest technologies of visualization, which operate on the principle of digital and algorithmic code. They synthesize different planes of affectivity and transform, modulate, and combine the different modes of signs into a single technical-organic complex: they offer new ways of seeing and feeling the world. Thus, hybrid ecology in Saraceno’s case does not imply a return to primordial ways of life, but on the contrary, it forms a semiosphere attuned to a specific plane of consistency that enfolds distinct modes of signs and develops them into an expression of hitherto unsuspected variants of life.
Funding source: Focal images: Violence and Inhumanism in contemporary art and media culture
Award Identifier / Grant number: GACR/22-17984S
-
Research funding: The study was funded by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR), project No. 22-17984S: Focal images: Violence and Inhumanism in contemporary art and media culture.
References
Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The posthuman. New York: Polity Press.Search in Google Scholar
Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. Posthuman knowledge. New York: Polity Press.Search in Google Scholar
Bubandt, Nils. 2017. Spirits, stones, and the necropolitics of the Anthropocene. In Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan & Nils Bubandt (eds.), Arts of living on a damaged planet: Ghosts and monsters of the Anthropocene, 121–141. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Search in Google Scholar
Buchanan, Brett. 2008. Onto-ethologies: The animal environments of Uexküll, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze. New York: State University of New York Press.Search in Google Scholar
Cimatti, Felice. 2019. From ontology to ethology: Uexküll and Deleuze and Guattari. In Francesca Michelini & Kristian Köchy (eds.), Jakob von Uexküll and philosophy, 172–187. New York & London: Routledge.10.4324/9780429279096-11Search in Google Scholar
Davis, Heather & Etienne Turpin. 2015. Art & death: Lives between the fifth assessment & the sixth extinction. In Heather Davis & Etienne Turpin (eds.). Art in the Anthropocene, 3–30. London: Open Humanities Press.Search in Google Scholar
Dawson, Ashley. 2016. Extinction: A radical philosophy. New York & London: OR.10.2307/j.ctv62hf5hSearch in Google Scholar
Deely, John. 2004. Semiotics and Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of Umwelt. Sign Systems Studies 32(1–2). 11–34. https://doi.org/10.12697/sss.2004.32.1-2.01.Search in Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles & Felix Guattari. 1987 [1980]. A thousand plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Search in Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles & Felix Guattari. 1994. What is philosophy. New York & London: Verso.Search in Google Scholar
Demos, Thomas J. 2017. Against the Anthropocene: Visual culture and environment today. Berlin: Sternberg Press.Search in Google Scholar
Engelmann, Sasha. 2017. Social spiders and hybrid webs at Studio Tomás Saraceno. Cultural Geographies 24(1). 161–169. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474016647371.Search in Google Scholar
Engelmann, Sasha. 2019. Of spiders and simulations. Cultural Geographies 26(3). 305–322. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474019838310.Search in Google Scholar
Engelmann, Sasha. 2021. Sensing art in the atmosphere: Elemental lures and aerosolar practices. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780429270437Search in Google Scholar
Grozs, Elizabeth. 2008. Chaos, territory, art: Deleuze and the framing of the Earth. New York: Columbia University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Han, Lei. 2021. The idealistic elements in modern semiotic studies: With particular recourse to the Umwelt theory. Concentric 47(1). 107–128.Search in Google Scholar
Hoffmeyer, Jesper. 2013. Why do we need a semiotic understanding of life. In Brian G. Henning & Adam C. Scarfe (eds.). Beyond mechanism: Putting life back into biology, 148–169. Pennsylvania: Lexington.Search in Google Scholar
Kohn, Eduardo. 2013. How forests think: Toward an anthropology beyond the human. Berkeley: University of California Press.10.1525/california/9780520276109.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Krafft, Bertrand. 1982. The significance and complexity of communication in spiders. In Peter N. Witt & Jerome S. Rovner (eds.), Spider communication: Mechanisms and ecological significance, 15–66. Princeton: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400857517.15Search in Google Scholar
Kwok, Sinead. 2020. The human-animal divide in communication: Anthropocentric, posthuman and integrationist answers. Language & Communication 74. 61–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2020.06.005.Search in Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1986. Visualization and cognition: Thinking with eyes and hands. Knowledge and society 6. 1–40.Search in Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 2015. Some experiments in arts and politics. In Edward A. Shanken (ed.), Systems: Documents of contemporary art, 223–227. London & Cambridge: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Museo Aero Solar. 2023. Museo Aero Solar: Solar energy flying museum. https://museoaerosolar.wordpress.com/museo/ (accessed 10 May 2023).Search in Google Scholar
Parikka, Jussi. 2020. A recursive web of models: Studio Tomás Saraceno’s working objects. Configurations 28(3). 309–332. https://doi.org/10.1353/con.2020.0019.Search in Google Scholar
Pantenburg, Volker. 2016. Working images: Harun Farocki and the operational image. In Jen Eder & Charlotte Klonk (eds.), Image operations: Visual media and political conflict, 49–62. Manchester: Manchester University Press.10.7765/9781526108647.00011Search in Google Scholar
Saraceno, Tomás. 2018. Light breeze: Stillness in motion. In Christine Shaw & Etienne Turpin (eds.), The work of wind, vol. 1, 79–97. Berlin: K. Verlag.Search in Google Scholar
Saraceno, Tomás, Stefano Boeari & Hans Ulrich Obrist. 2012. In conversation with Stefano Boeari and Hans Ulrich Obrist. In Jeffrey Kastner (ed.), Nature, 116–117. Cambridge: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Saraceno, Tomás, Sasha Engelmann & Bronislaw Szerszynski. 2015. Becoming aerosolar: From solar sculptures to cloud cities. In Heather Davis & Etienne Turpin (eds.), Art in the Anthropocene, 57–62. London: Open Humanities Press.Search in Google Scholar
Saraceno, Tomás, Ally Bishop, Adrian Krell & Roland Mühlethaler. 2019. Arachnid orchestras: Artistic research in vibrational interspecies communication. In Peggy S. M. Hill, Reinhard Lakes-Harlan, Valerio Mazzoni, Peter M. Narins, Meta Virant-Doberlet & Andreas Wessel (eds.), Biotremology: Studying vibrational behavior, 458–509. Cham: Springer.10.1007/978-3-030-22293-2_24Search in Google Scholar
Sebeok, Thomas. 2010. Biosemiotics: Its roots, proliferation and prospects. In Donald Favareau (ed.), Essential readings in biosemiotics, 217–236. Cham: Springer.10.1007/978-1-4020-9650-1_6Search in Google Scholar
Studio Tomás Saraceno. 2023a. Arachnid orchestra. Jam sessions. https://studiotomassaraceno.org/arachnid-orchestra-jam-sessions/ (accessed 10 May 2023).Search in Google Scholar
Studio Tomás Saraceno. 2023b. On air. https://studiotomassaraceno.org/on-air/ (accessed 10 May 2023).Search in Google Scholar
Su, Isabelle, Ian Hattwick, Christine Southworth, Evan Ziporyn, Ally Bishop, Roland Mühlethaler, Tomás Saraceno & Markus J. Buehler. 2021. Interactive exploration of a hierarchical spider web structure with sound. Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces 16. 71–85. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-021-00375-x.Search in Google Scholar
Su, Isabelle, Zhao Qin, Tomás Saraceno, Adrian Krell, Roland Mühlethaler, Ally Bishop & Markus J. Buehler. 2018. Imaging and analysis of a three-dimensional spider web architecture. Journal of the Royal Society of Interface 15(146). 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2018.0193.Search in Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan & Nils Bubandt. 2017. Haunted landscapes of the Anthropocene. In Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan & Nils Bubandt (eds.), Arts of living on a damaged planet: Ghosts and monsters of the Anthropocene, G1–G14. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Search in Google Scholar
Uetz, George W. & Gail E. Stratton. 1982. Acoustic communication and reproductive isolation in spiders. In Peter N. Witt & Jerome S. Rovner (eds.), Spider communication: Mechanisms and ecological significance, 123–159. Princeton: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400857517.123Search in Google Scholar
Uetz, George W. & J. Andrew Roberts. 2002. Multisensory cues and multimodal communication in spiders: Insights from video/audio playback studies. Brain, Behavior and Evolution 59(4). 222–230. https://doi.org/10.1159/000064909.Search in Google Scholar
Uexküll, Jakob Johann von. 1926. Theoretical biology. New York: Harcourt, Brace.Search in Google Scholar
Uexküll, Jakob Johann von. 1957 [1934]. A stroll through the worlds of animals and men: A picture book of invisible worlds. In Claire H. Schiller (trans. & ed.), Instinctive behavior: The development of modern concept, 5–80. New York: International Universities Press.Search in Google Scholar
Uexküll, Jakob Johann von. 2001 [1937]. The new concept of Umwelt: A link between science and the humanities. Semiotica 134(1/4). 111–123.10.1515/semi.2001.018Search in Google Scholar
Uexküll, Jakob Johann von. 2010 [1940]. The theory of meaning. In Donald Favareau (ed.), Essential readings in biosemiotics, 81–114. Cham: Springer.10.1007/978-1-4020-9650-1_2Search in Google Scholar
Zielinski, Siegfried. 2006. Deep time of the media. London & Cambridge: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
