Captive Mosquitoes make Music in Innovative Installation

Ali Momeni has recently posted an article about his and Robin Meier’s installation Strategies for Post-Apocalyptic Computation that was shown at the 2009 Spark Festival. Based on the article it looks as though they have renamed the piece Truce. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Our installation explores reciprocal musical interactions between the mosquito and the computer. The computer produces a stimulus signal to which the living mosquitoes synchronize. Subsequently, the computer sings a third voice that responds to the musical inflections of the mosquitoes’ buzz. These three voices come in and out of harmony depending on the mosquitoes propensity to maintain its sync with the stimulus signal.

I made three or four visits to this fascinating installation during the festival. Here’s a segment from a recording of the piece that I made during one of my visits. To see some well produced video of the installation please visit the original article.

Brief Recording of Truce

2 thoughts on “Captive Mosquitoes make Music in Innovative Installation

  1. Very interesting. When using different frequencies you can probably choose if you’d like to attract female or male mosquitoes, since their sound-receiving antenna’s freq ranges are different.
    At its resonant frequency, the male antenna approximately matches the dominant frequency component of the female flight sounds and recognizes this as a green light for mating.

  2. Interesting that sound can manipulate or attract mosquitoes. I think we should use it to trap all mosquitoes and kill them all at once.

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