Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Kristof Vancken, Genk Manifesta, 2012.
0h!m 1Gas is an artistic research and audiovisual installation that approaches the self-organisation in ants as a cybernetic system with emergent acoustic manifestations. Designed as an artificial ecology, 0h!m 1Gas investigates the complexity of leaf-cutter ants by amplifying their vibratory signals, known as stridulations, while doing a motion tracking of their social labour. By means of contact microphones, turntables, and video cameras interfaced with a computer vision program in Max Jitter, the life of the ant colony emerges as a complex soundscape of scratching and stridulation effects. The installation consists of two components: the biological (composed by ants, fungi, and vegetation) and the technological (composed by turntables, microphones, video, and computer). The source of inspiration for this sound-reactive installation is based on the functional resemblance of the turntable, as a cultural artifact for sound production in humans, to the stridulatory organ of several eusocial ants, as a biological artifact for social communication.