Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have made spider webs into music, making an atmospheric soundtrack, that could help them better understand how arachnids spin their intricate webs and even interact.
The MIT team collaborated with Berlin-based artist Tomás Saraceno to capture two-dimensional laser scans of a spider web, which were stitched together and turned into a mathematical model, capable of recreating the web in three dimensions in virtual reality. They also collaborated with MIT’s music department to develop the virtual harp.
Even if the network seems to be random, there are many internal constructs that can be visualised and examined. “It’s very difficult for the human mind or human brain to comprehend all these structural data,” said MIT engineering professor Markus Buehler, who discussed the study on Monday at a virtual meeting of the American Chemical Society.
Listening to music when going around the VR spider web allows him to see and hear certain internal changes, giving him a deeper understanding of how spiders see the environment, he told CNN.
“Spiders have very keen vibrational sensors; they use vibrations to guide themselves and interact with other spiders, so the notion of thought simply as a spider would perceive the world was something that was very obvious to us as spider material scientists,” Buehler said.
Spiders may make their webs without the use of scaffolding or supports, so understanding how they function, could contribute to the creation of innovative modern 3D printing techniques, he said.
They searched the web while the spider built it, and Buehler likened it to a stringed instrument that changes when you play it.
“While you’re playing the guitar, unexpectedly new strings will appear, evolve, and develop,” he said.
Buehler said that they have captured the vibrations produced by spiders during various activities such as web construction, courtship signals, and communication with other spiders, and are using artificial intelligence to construct synthetic copies.
“We’re starting to think we may be able to understand spider language,” he said. “The intention is that we will then play these back to the web structure to improve the spider’s ability to interact with it and maybe persuade the spider to behave in a certain way, to respond to the signals in a certain way.”
He mentioned that work is still ongoing and that they have had to close their lab due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Buehler has long been involved in the chemical link between music and materials, and he has used related methods to demonstrate the slight distinctions between the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, as well as two separate strains of the Covid-19 virus (you’ll hear one through your left speaker and the other through your right).
Buehler claims that the webs are musically fascinating, and that you can hear the melodies, the spider makes when building them.
“It’s strange, creepy, and frightening, but ultimately stunning,” he said.
Members of the team have performed live musical shows using the VR web as performers jam on human instruments.
“I did it because I wanted to be able to transmit things really from the spider experience, which is very atonal and creepy and spooky, if you will,” Buehler said.
