I came across a sculptor named James Norton, the sculptures that were most intriguing to me were the ones made entirely of cable ties. I decided to use this same medium to create 3D pieces that I suspended from the ceiling. I tried to connect the cable ties in a way so as to imitate the climbing action of the ants that I had been focusing on.
In these 3Ds I tried to carry along the same sort of affect that my other 3D pieces shared as well as try to visually bring in the idea of the intricate underground cties that giant colonies of ants build.
I recorded general movements that my ants made when taken out of the ant farm and planned to stitch the patterns onto canvases i made using wood and a bed sheet. I used these materials instead of buying one as I thought it was more suitable as it looks more natural and the ants build everything from scratch. I used hand stitching as the medium as its a time consuming thing that must be done one stitch at a time.
After I finished the piece I noticed that the back of the canvas looked maybe more interesting than the front. I could see the black thread as food sources and the coloured thread as the paths and alternative routs that the ants could have taken to get to them. The dotted stitching is like the phermone trails that the ants leave behind them so as to remember the best route to get to the food.
I made another few canvases and experimented with different ways to represent the ants with the thread. In this one each stitch represents an ant. I had noted that when ants come to an obstacle when following in a line they would usually split from thir line for a momnt to make their way around the obstacle before rejoining to one single line again, rather than climbing over the obstacle.
Ants may individually not have a lot of intelligence, but as a collective super-organism they are incredible. Humans are meant to be a super-organism too . In my opinion we just f'd up along the way when we corrupted our initial conditions.
Here's a video to convince you just how intelligent ants are when unified. A group of researchers poured cement into a giant ant hill, to observe the tunnels and inner workings of a large ant colony's habitat They dug the earth out from around the cement when it was dry, revealing a monumental city-state that's intricacy was miles beyond their highest expectations. Have a look for yourself, see the brilliantly worked out structure created by these tiny natural architects.
You could interpret the self-organisation of ants as a metaphor for the functioning of a human mind. Ants create complex colonies in which individuals perform jobs for the greater good. Pretty much the same way that billions of neurons generate thought in our brains by communicating with each other..
Here's another shocking video that captures an incredible event seen in the ant-world. It's of a phenomenon known as the Ant Death Spiral , there's a glitch in the colony where the phermone trail that is being followed has gotten looped, the ants continue to follow the phermone trail of the ant in front of them resulting in an endless circular mill. Hundreds of thousands of ants circle round and round and round until they all eventually exhaust, and die.
Like some sort of mental illness in the mind of a person. Or one of the things we as people in this society get caught up in which then restrict our freedom such as religion or an unhappy work life resulting from a desire of money, wanting and consuming.
That last video reminded me of a tradition that Muslims carry out, where thousands gather and circle around the Kaaba in Mecca. Here's a video I found of this event. It has the same effect on me that the death ant spiral does, and the Muslims themselves appear as little ants because of the sheer quantity of them moving simultaneously.
Friday, 2 December 2011
i liked the triangular structure as the pointy and angular shapes made in the outline can also be seen in the image of the colony of ants building a ladder with their bodies. I also liked the fact that each triangle is the identical, much like ants, plus the triangles work well as the fit nicely together.
I added wire lettering to the 3D so as to emphasise that the climbing motion between ants is what is meant to be portrayed.
Friday, 25 November 2011
Some more experimental 3D pieces that show my attempt to portray the movement of unified ants working together.
I took the negative image of the climbing ants and tried imagine the spaces btween the ants as the solid blocks of colour and discard the outline of the actual ants. I stitched these solid blocks into a canvas. I thought the result was quite nice but it was a labourous task as I had to fill in the solids by stitching one stitch at at a time. If any white was showing throught the affect would be ruined so it took a while to fill it all in.
After stitching the piece I found that the back of thhe canvas was also interesting looking. The solid black areas are like loads of tiny black ants crowded together perhaps feeding on a sticky swwet patchs left behind after food. When so many ants are so close to gether you can't distinguish where one ant starts and another finishs, instead they appear to be a moving black blotch.
The loos black strands of thread resemble the lines of ants going from one food source to another.
This 3D was to represent the ants using their bodies to climb and become something bigger than themselves. It's based on the negative space drawing of the ants building a bridge to get from one leaf to another distant one. I used nails and glue to make this.
I found that the lettering concept that I displayed in 2D to be quite interesting and began wondering how I could display this idea in a 3D piece, I made lots of letters and words by bending and twisting wire and documented them in the different arrangements that I thought captured the concept well. I used words like ants, work,and busy. I noticed that the shadows casted by these wire words gave an interesting effect. They gave me the feeling of the words moving and there being more of them than there actually were.
While playing with the idea that one lone ant is insignificant and quite pointless , but yet when these lone ants come together they can be a powerful and interesting thing i made the connection of how letters share this aspect. How a letter when on its own is meaningless but when put together with many can be very meaningful .
I did some drawings while attempting to show this similary between isolated ants and letters. I used the word "ant" to represent the actual body of the ants and wrote it repeatedly on the page in the manner a colony of ants would operate.
I decided to cut relevant words out of a newspaper as those words were meant to be part of a bigger picture. I then arranged the words on a page to convey the same concept of the insignificance of a lone ant or letter. The words appear to be organised and in sync with the pattern they are creating, however some of the words have been cut into separated letters, these have gotten scattered in a a seemingly more random pattern.
My ants settled in nicely and stared digging on day two. They must have figured out there was no gettin out of the ant farm and so they never dug again.. from day 5 to day today (day 27) theres been zero tunnel digging, they just hang about and try to escape through the air holes.
And do I gave them more challenging tasks to keep them and myself busy.
Took this ant a while to find the sugar in the centre but he got there none the less :). Unfortuantely he celebrated by dying a short while later.. I decided no more ants in the labyrinth
