A spider-obsessed artist is collaborating with MIT to spin the

architecture for climate change

一位痴迷于蜘蛛的艺术家正在与麻省理工学院合作，为气候变化旋转建筑

Tomás Saraceno’s “In Orbit,” a solo exhibition at the K21 Ständehaus in Düsseldorf, Germany.
托马斯*萨拉塞诺的"轨道"个展，在德国杜塞尔多夫的K21ständehaus举行。

Inside a dark exhibition hall at the Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, South Korea, a gigantic spider is
crawling along the web she has built with her own silk threads inside a cubed frame. The spinning
process and the sound of her creation are amplified by a microphone and the image is projected
on the wall behind. The eerie installation could well be the perfect prop for Halloween, but
according to its creator, Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno, we have a lot to learn from spiders—
including, possibly, how to live with climate change.
在韩国光州亚洲文化中心一个黑暗的展厅里，一只巨大的蜘蛛正沿着她用自己的丝线在一个立方体
框架内建造的网爬行。 旋转的过程和她创作的声音被麦克风放大，图像投射在后面的墙上。 怪异的
装置很可能是万圣节的完美道具，但根据其创作者，阿根廷艺术家Tomás Saraceno的说法，我们有
很多东西可以从蜘蛛中学习—可能包括如何应对气候变化。

“These complex spider webs help us understand that we are part of this cosmic web,” the Berlin-
based artist told Quartz, speaking about the large-scale work Cosmic Dust Installation featured
in Our Interplanetary Bodies, his first solo exhibition in South Korea running until March 25, 2018.
Born in 1973 and trained as an architect before becoming an artist, Saraceno is known for creating
artworks inspired by spiderwebs—and often made by actual spiders, thousands of them. Nearly a
decade ago, he set up a spider lab in his three-storey studio in southeast Berlin near the Spree
River to study spider architecture. It is a place that nearly a hundred spiders call home, and he
looks at their behavior and creations for inspiration for futuristic architectural structures that can
help humans live in a climate-changed environment.
Arachnologists have praised his work for “expanding the horizons of scientific research,” with his
approach of making photogrammetric scans of spider habitats in order to construct large three-
dimensional models of them. Bruno Latour, a French anthropologist who focuses on science and
technology, said that for Saraceno to achieve his artistic aims, he had to first “push the frontier of
spider science.”

"这些复杂的蜘蛛网帮助我们了解我们是这个宇宙网的一部分，"这位柏林艺术家告诉Quartz，谈到
我们的行星际机构中展出的大型作品宇宙尘埃装置，这是他在 Saraceno出生于1973年，在成为艺
术家之前接受过建筑师培训，以创作灵感来自spiderwebs的艺术品而闻名—通常由实际的蜘蛛制作
，成千上万的蜘蛛。 近十年前，他在柏林东南部靠近施普雷河的三层工作室里建立了一个蜘蛛实验
室，研究蜘蛛建筑。 这是一个近百只蜘蛛称之为家的地方，他看着他们的行为和创作，为未来派建
筑结构寻找灵感，这些建筑结构可以帮助人类生活在气候变化的环境中。 蜘蛛学家称赞他的工作"扩
大了科学研究的视野"，他的方法是对蜘蛛栖息地进行摄影测量扫描，以便构建它们的大型三维模型
。 专注于科学和技术的法国人类学家布鲁诺*拉图尔（Bruno Latour）说，萨拉切诺要实现他的艺术
目标，他必须首先"推动蜘蛛科学的前沿。”

“We are part of this cosmic web”: Spiderwebs form part of a large-scale installation featured in “Our
Interplanetary Bodies,” Tomas Saraceno’s first solo exhibition in South Korea.

Saraceno’s enthusiasm for spiders, and the possibilities they suggest, is backed by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was the inaugural visiting artist at MIT’s Center for Art,
Science and Technology (CAST) and has an ongoing residency to collaborate with scientists
there. MIT describes his work as drawing on physics and aeronautics, and says his biospheres
share attributes of soap bubbles and neural networks as well as spider webs. Besides noting their
incredible strength, MIT believes spiderwebs have lessons for less tangible networks, such as the
internet, for their ability to continue operating well despite local tears and flaws.
Saraceno says that of the more than 40,000 types of spiders, about two dozen of them are social
and without hierarchy, meaning that rather than destroying existing webs, these spiders build new
structures on top of existing ones, and live there. The installation on show in South Korea is built
by one of them, a species known as Nephila, or commonly known as the Golden Orb Weaver,
common in warm regions from Asia to Australia, Africa and Americas.
“It’s like me going to your house. This is built by different spiders with different degrees of social
ability. They collaborate to build these webs,” he says. It is a communal habitat, he says, and
humans should learn to live like spiders do.

The artist has been testing such possibilities by creating installations of a monumental scale that
allow people to experience being in a suspended web, giving birth to his Cloud Cities series. He
envisions that in the future humans will be able to live in a connected way, sharing a habitat in a
sustainable modular city floating above the clouds. It’s a vision of an architecture that might one
day help humans cope with the effects of climate change, such as the expected reduced
availability of land to live on. National boundaries will also be dissolved up in the sky—a utopia that
Saraceno dreams of.

Saraceno对蜘蛛的热情，以及他们提出的可能性，得到了麻省理工学院的支持。 他是麻省理工学院
艺术，科学和技术中心（CAST）的首任访问艺术家，并一直在那里与科学家合作。 麻省理工学院
将他的工作描述为利用物理学和航空学，并表示他的生物圈共享肥皂泡和神经网络以及蜘蛛网的属
性。 除了注意到他们令人难以置信的实力，麻省理工学院认为spiderwebs有经验教训不太有形的网
络，如互联网，他们的能力，继续运作良好，尽管当地的眼泪和缺陷。

Saraceno说，在超过40,000种类型的蜘蛛中，大约有二十几种是社会性的，没有层次结构，这意味
着这些蜘蛛不是摧毁现有的网络，而是在现有的网络之上建造新的结 在韩国展出的装置是由其中一
个物种建造的，一种被称为Nephila的物种，或者通常被称为金球织女，常见于从亚洲到澳大利亚，
非洲和美洲的温暖地区。

"就像我去你家一样。 这是由具有不同程度社交能力的不同蜘蛛构建的。 他们合作构建这些网络，"

他说。 他说，这是一个公共栖息地，人类应该学会像蜘蛛一样生活。

艺术家一直在测试这种可能性，创造了一个巨大规模的装置，让人们体验在一个悬挂的网络，产生
了他的云城市系列。 他设想，未来人类将能够以互联的方式生活，在漂浮在云层之上的可持续模块
化城市中共享栖息地。 这是一个建筑的愿景，可能有一天会帮助人类应对气候变化的影响，例如预
期的可用土地减少。 国界也将被溶解在天空中-一个萨拉塞诺梦想的乌托邦。
A large spider is busy spinning her web at Saraceno’s exhibition at the Asia Culture Center in South
Korea.

In 2012, his exhibition On the Roof: Cloud City at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
featured a large-scale sculpture made of modular compartments that visitors could climb inside.
Installation In Orbit, a webbed structure containing five air-filled spheres suspended 25 meters (80
feet) above the ground is on long-term display at K21 in Dusseldorf, Germany, and people can
also climb all over it, just like spiders.

Saraceno describes himself as an artist who “lives and works in and beyond the planet Earth” and
apparently it’s not a joke. In addition to Cloud Cities he has created famous floating sculptures in
his Aerocene series, first publicly displayed during the UN climate talks in Paris 2015 that resulted
in a landmark agreement. These sculptures are propelled by sunlight—they float as the sun heats
up the air that fills the sculptures—making them prototypes for how humans can travel in the
future, without burning fossil fuels or consuming any other form of energy that pollutes the earth.
One of these floating sculptures is also part of the show in South Korea.

“If it’s big enough it can lift a person—and even a city—up above the clouds. The sun can help us
reverse gravity,” he said while launching the floating sculpture at the outdoor theater of the Asia
Culture Center.
Saraceno hopes that his art can inspire a feeling of inter-connectedness that helps people accept
the links between humans and everything else in the universe, including climate change. “I’m
surprised to see people deny climate change, like some people in America. There’s an urgency to
communicate and rebuild [the trust]. Politics isn’t dealing with the urgency of climate change,” he
says.
2012年，他在纽约大都会艺术博物馆的"屋顶：云城"展览展出了一个由模块化隔间制成的大型雕塑
，游客可以在里面攀爬。 安装在轨道上，一个包含悬挂在地面25米（80英尺）以上的五个充满空气
的球体的蹼状结构在德国杜塞尔多夫的K21长期展出，人们也可以爬遍它，就像蜘蛛

Saraceno将自己描述为"在地球内外生活和工作"的艺术家，显然这不是一个笑话。 除了云城之外，
他还在他的Aerocene系列中创作了着名的浮动雕塑，该系列首次在2015年巴黎联合国气候会谈期间
公开展出，并达成了一项具有里程碑意义的协议。 这些雕塑由阳光推动-它们随着太阳加热充满雕塑
的空气而漂浮-使它们成为人类未来如何旅行的原型，而无需燃烧化石燃料或消耗任何其他污染地球
其中一个漂浮雕塑也是韩国展览的一部分。

"如果它足够大，它可以将一个人—甚至一座城市—提升到云层之上。 太阳可以帮助我们扭转重力，
"他在亚洲文化中心的户外剧院推出漂浮雕塑时说。

萨拉切诺希望他的艺术能够激发一种相互联系的感觉，帮助人们接受人类与宇宙中其他一切之间的
联系，包括气候变化。 "我很惊讶地看到人们否认气候变化，就像美国的一些人一样。 沟通和重建[
信任]是迫在眉睫的. 政治并没有处理气候变化的紧迫性，"他说。

By
Vivienne Chow
PublishedNovember 14, 2017