SurveillAnts (Show)

BioArt Installation, Solo exhibition

For ages people have watched ants and wondered-appreciating their complexity, weaving them into fables to teach humans about the virtues of diligence, altruism, and resilience. In SurveillAnts, the artists use surveillance technology to observe the movements of a colony of Harvester Ants, visualizing the patterns of an emergent system at work.

An ant colony is a superorganism—a true collective in which each individual is a node acting in accordance with the larger system. A single ant will not survive alone because she is not inclined to. Only the colony produces the behavior needed for survival. Somewhere between the individual and the collective there emerges the will to live.

SurveillAnts is a visual exploration of collective intelligence and the instinctual forces that shape life at all levels. By challenging the perception of ants as mere pests, SurveillAnts invites participants to slow down, observe, and reflect.