Pursuit of Beauty: The Spider Orchestra

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The Spider Orchestra

BBC Radio 4 - Pursuit of Beauty, The Spider Orchestra

The art of Tomás Saraceno who makes sculptures and music with spiders and their webs

Struck by the beauty of spider webs Tomás Saraceno made them into sculptures and discovered that when spiders move the silken strands make tiny sounds - that he makes into music.

This summer’s exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London is ‘In Collaboration - Webs of Life’ by the artist Tomás Saraceno - whose collaborators include spiders,  Cameroonian spider diviners and various life forms that inhabit the Royal Parks. So, Radio 4 has broadcast again 'The Spider Orchestra', a programme first broadcast in 2018 about his work with arachnids.  

The Berlin-based Argentinian artist trained as an architect. He was struck by the beauty of spider webs, their structural intricacy and began making them into sculptural works. Then Saraceno realised that every time a spider tugs a string as it spins a web, or moves along the silken strands, this causes vibrations. Using microphones and amplifiers it is possible to hear the tiny music they make. The different species create various sounds - bass, treble, percussion - and the result is an orchestra of arachnids.

In 2018 Saraceno filled the whole of the Palais de Tokyo gallery in Paris with extraordinary, beautifully lit spiders' webs, in an exhibition called 'On Air'. Some webs he connected to microphones so their occupants' movements echoed round the gallery. 

Saraceno's work is a collaboration between artist, spiders and people, a kind of jam session. He also invites musicians to to respond to them, to play along with spiders. The famous experimental composer Alvin Lucier does this in a concert, featured in this programme.  
 
In the gallery in Paris, and his Berlin studio, Saraceno reveals his thinking and observations. 'The Spider Orchestra'  captures these, and all these sounds in a sonic web, and combines them. It, too, is a collaboration, between artist, spiders, people and producer - creating a compelling composition, for radio.

Producer and Presenter: Julian May

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