Coming soon to a music venue near you.
Amanda Kooser / CNET
Spiders do not see well, so they sense the world through the vibrations that ripple through their intricate webs as they stretch systrings or blow a breeze. It seems that the vibrations make for a different world music.
This is thanks to the work of MIT scientists who sonify the 3D structure of cobwebs and shared the results online. You can listen to their spider soundtrack in the video below.
“Sounds like two things: 1. A delayed version of the dial-up sound. 2. A Yoko Ono composition,” a YouTube commentator said in response to the video.
The researchers, led by Markus Buehler, an MIT engineering professor and a composer of experimental music, presented the results of their work Monday at the American Chemical Society’s spring meeting.
During the construction of the natural structure, the team scanned a cobweb with a laser and assigned different frequencies to web strings to create ‘notes’ that they combined into patterns based on the 3D shape of the web. Together, the notes generated melodies, which the researchers then played on an original harp instrument. As far as I know, the compositions have not yet been sold as an NFT.
Buehler has long been interested in deriving sound from biological materials as another way of understanding their underlying science and mathematics. Previously, he showed the coronavirus.
A better understanding of how spiders build their web steps step by step could lead to ‘spider imitation’ of 3D printers building complex microelectronics, Buehler hopes. “The spider’s way of ‘printing’ the web is remarkable because no supporting material is used, as is usually required in current 3D printing methods,” he said in a statement.
But the team also hopes the research can help people communicate with spiders in their own language through synthetic signals. The scientists recorded vibrations produced when spiders were engaged in activities such as twisting the web and communicating with fellow arachnids, including through courtship signals. A machine learning algorithm successfully classified the sounds according to the activities.
I just want to know when I can get tickets to see a spider in concert.