published on
A phenomenon that seems to have escaped the attention of many researchers is how insects in the area of Cambridge, UK, deal with heat waves - maybe because of the relative rarity of heat waves in that part of the UK until recently. Whan dealing with rising temperatures, local insects tend to swarm together and organise their vocalisations into regular patterns that follow a progression not unlike that of cellular automata. Surprisingly, different kinds and geni of insects tend to join in and lock into the pattern together, suggesting a kind of inter-species communication that has also escaped our scrutiny
In fact, in an unpublished article, Martin Gardner has ventured the hypothesis that the late John H. Conway might have been influenced by the sounds of insects while working on his particular version of cellular automata - what we nowadays know as Conway's Game of Life...
...Of course, I'm making things up again. "Insect Automata Swarm" is my contribution to this week's Disquiet Junto project #0503: "Global Swarming". For this project, I used no less than 39 of the available insect sounds, and structured the "swarm" by using four out-of-phase cellular automata objects in Pure Data. The result is a slightly cacofonous, part-machinic and part-organic, but always organised rumble and noise.
Sound sampled here proceed from two previous Disquiet Junto projects:
Disquiet Junto #0494: "Insect Menagerie":
https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0494
and Disquiet Junto #0498: "Sonic Entomologist"
https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0498
Samples include work by @analoc, @ausgesuchtestenohren, Bbob Drake, Bee Kind, Bick Brannigan III, Breanna Johnston, Caustic Gates, @creaturesonce, Fake Genius, Gary Barwin, Gerard Paresys, Karmic Resonance, K. Joule, Krakenkraft, Lewlaufer, @Losanch, Michael Ash, @Net, @morgulbee, Parallel Tool, Paul Beaudoin, Piney Boy, Radio Hummingbird, Richard Fichera, Scott Boone, @seramind, @wasabicube, @zedkah, @Zounzabar, et al.
More on this 502nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Global Swarming (The Assignment: Create a swarm of imaginary insects) — at: https://disquiet.com/0502/
Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:
https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/
https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern
https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern
More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0502-global-swarming/