MIT wants to “communicate” with spiders using their web music

Apparently l Marcus BullerA materials engineer at MIT, an intricate web-weaving spider is a bit like a human who composes music. In fact, each tuft produces a unique sound, allowing the animal to distinguish the prey, A potential partner or stirring up the breeze.

With the help of his colleagues, Buehler imagined a method that would give us potential Spider web exploration approx Visually and acoustically, he admires its structure. To do this, the team used virtual reality.

A work based on another work made a few years ago

To design this somewhat particular instrument, Buehler and his collaborators relied on the artist’s work Thomas Saraceno. The latter was developed already in 2018, in cooperation with engineers from With, A tool called Spider cloth. As a reminder, this is an interactive tool inspired by a spider’s web Cyrtophora Citricula. To allow us to interact with the web, Researchers have now integrated a virtual reality component.

Three-dimensional paintings

According to the team’s explanations, this work will not be limited only Better understanding of 3D architecture from U.S world Wide WebBut also to learn the language of spiders that relies on vibrations.

“They (spiders) don’t see well, so they feel their world through vibrations of different frequencies.”Boehler said. In fact, spider web isn’t just round and flat. Most of them are built in three dimensions.

Artificial signals to “speak the language of spiders”

As mentioned Science alertTo translate the structure of the web into music, scientists placed a tropical tent shaped like the spider “Cyrtophora citricola” in a rectangular structure. Then they used lasers to create 2D sections of the web that the monster formed.

Thanks prof The algorithm Intricately, they succeeded in creating a three-dimensional structure of said sections and attributing to each strand its own sound frequency. In the end, the generated notes were played according to the structure of the board. Buehler does not intend to stop there. For example, he plans to evolve from this new business Synthetic signals for communicating via spider language.