VIBRATION: Tuning
From time to time - when the web’s integrity is compromised, or when other environmental factors (such as humidity, etc.) alter the properties of the web - the spider will ‘tune’ its web to maintain its signalling capabilities. In this ‘tuning’ process, the spider will carefully adjust the threads to maintain and modulate the tension of the web, therefore preserving the web’s capacity to carry vibrational messages. This process of “tuning” is also a generative way to think of the spider web is as a multi-stringed instrument - a harp with thousands of strings, all in tension with one another - and the spider as a skilled musician, using its eight legs to pluck and strum this web instrument to better attune to the vibrational signals it carries and resounds, which relay information to the spider about the world.

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VIBRATION: Tremulation
Tremulation is one of the most ubiquitous types of spider vibrational behaviours, understood as trembling, shaking or jerking body movements which produce vibrations - which, for the spider, might include bouncing up and down on the web, producing transverse vibrational waves. Spider tremulation tends to produce substrate-borne vibrations in lower frequencies (in the range of 1-300 Hz, Hill & Wessel 2014).

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STRIDULATION

Stridulation occurs when the spider rubs two rigid body parts against each other. Stridulatory organs have been described for a number of spider species, but few sound recordings exist. Stridulation signals have been documented in a range of spiders, where the signals seems to act in intraspecies communication.

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SPIDER WEB BUILDING VIBRATIONS

Spiders carefully build their webs using different types of spider silk, allowing the spider to control the web’s architecture, tension and stiffness, all of which affect how signals travel through the web. As the spider builds and tunes its silken musical instrument, it also produces vibrations.

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SPIDER EATING VIBRATIONS

When web-building spiders catch, wrap and devour their prey, they produce vibrations that travel through the threads of the web

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SPIDER COURTSHIP SIGNALS

In spider courtship rituals, usually a male spider will send a signal to a female spider to test her receptivity to mating - which could be either a drumming signal, or a repertoire of plucking and stridulation signals - using the main threads of the female spider’s web (radial threads in the case of an orb web).

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TERRITORIAL SIGNALS

Both web-building and non web-building spiders send territorial vibrational signals - which are usually intra-specific signals - that is, signals to members of their own species. These signals might be sent by males competing for mateship rights, including ‘jamming signals’ that male spiders will send to disrupt the courtship signal of another male.

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SOCIAL SIGNALS

Of the 48,127 known species of spider, there are only 25 known species that exhibit some degree of sociality. The degree of social or cooperative behaviour varies, and sociality is usually differentiated between colonial spiders and cooperative or ‘permanently social’ spiders. Social spiders use intraspecific signals to communicate with one another, whether in a shared web, or within a colony of webs.

MIMICKING SIGNALS

Some spiders will also mimic the vibratory signals sent by their prey - insects such as leafhoppers or even other spiders. An example is the jumping spider Portia fimbriata, who will mimic the mating vibratory signals of, for instance, Euryattus sp. Spiders. When the Euryattus spider responds to this signal, she is greeted not by a potential mate, but by the Portia predator.

SPIDER SALON, STUDIO RECORDING WITH EVAN ZIPORYN

Head of Music and Theater Arts, inaugural Director of the Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST) and clarinettist/composer Evan Ziporyn visited Studio Tomás Saraceno in Rummelsburg, Berlin in September 2015, to speak about spiders, art and the musical possibilities that resonate in and between spiders, webs, silk and humans. During this visit, Ziporyn engaged in an interspecies jam session with a duet of vibrating Cyrtophora citricola spiders in their shared, complex three-dimensional tent web. This encounter is described in the book: Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions (2017)

SPIDER SALON JAM SESSION WITH TOMOMI ADACHI

In September 2016, An early Spider Salon initiated in Tomás Saraceno’s Berlin studio, Berlin-based vocalist and composer Tomomi Adachi - renowned for his improvised music with voice, live electronics and self-made instruments - was invited to imagine an acoustic interspecies dialogue with a chorus of Cyrtophora citricola spiders, a Nephila senegalensis spider, and a percussive ensemble of Lycosidae spiders.

SPIDER SALON, HAUS DER KULTUREN DER WELT, BERLIN

A Spider Salon with Tomás Saraceno and Molly Nesbit in an encounter with an Eratigena atrica (Tegenaria atrica) spider in a sonified web in an open carbon frame. This Spider Salon took place at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin in 2014, as part of the event, ‘'A Matter Theater' (2014).

ARACHNID ORCHESTRA. JAM SESSION #3 WITH JOYCE BEETUAN KOH AND ETIENNE TURPIN, SINGAPORE CCA

As part of Tomás Saraceno’s Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions solo exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), NTU Singapore in 2015 curated by Ute Meta Bauer and Anca Rujoiu, Saraceno invited a number of musicians and performers to enter into an acoustic dialogue with spider/webs, mediated through the instruments of his Arachnid Orchestra. These encounters took the shape of three Jam Sessions. Jam Session #3: Away We Go was developed collaboratively by musician Joyce Betuan Koh and philosopher Etienne Turpin. 

ARACHNID ORCHESTRA. JAM SESSION #2 WITH BANI HAYKAL, SINGAPORE CCA

As part of Tomás Saraceno’s Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions solo exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), NTU Singapore in 2015 curated by Ute Meta Bauer and Anca Rujoiu, Saraceno invited a number of musicians and performers to enter into an acoustic dialogue with spider/webs, mediated through the instruments of his Arachnid Orchestra. These encounters took the shape of three Jam Sessions. Jam Session #2: Variations on Hello was performed by musician Bani Haykal. Introduced by arachnologist Joseph K. H. Koh, Jam Session #1 incorporated a set of materials to transmit vibrations to the spiders, in an attempt to investigate whether specific frequencies and rhythmic patterns would trigger a response and produce a feedback mechanism between spiders and humans.

SPIDER JAM SESSION WITH SILVIA BOLOGNESI, MILAN (IT)

On the occasion of Tomás Saraceno's the Weaving The Cosmos hosted by Bulgari at Ulrico Hoepli's Planetarium during the 2019 Milan Design Week, music performer Silvia Bolognesi was invited to participate to a jam session with the spiders/webs. Silvia Bolognesi  is a double bass virtuoso and is considered as one of the most daring and interesting personalities of the Italian jazz scene. Her improvisation skills enter in dialogue with the spider/webs, transforming the installation into a collective musical instrument through which terrestrial and interplanetary tremors resound.