For my interactive touch piece, I wanted to highlight the beauty of bugs. A lot of people are grossed out or scared of bugs, but many of them are beautiful, gentle, living beings! Moths are always seen as pests, but are harmless and can be just as pretty as butterflies. I wanted to incorporate the use of live bugs in my piece, forcing the viewer to interact with the bugs in a positive way.
The premise is a large glass jar containing moths and food for them to feed on, as I don’t want to transfer them between containers and risk injuring or frightening them any more than necessary. Around the inside of the jar will be 8 pairs of a positive and a negative strip of copper tape. The positive strips will be connected to the makey makey as inputs, and the negatives will all be connected together to ground. I will also create paper moths to attatch to the outside of the jar, making it more decorative.
To interact with the piece, a viewer will use a flashlight to guide the moths to a specific place within the jar, causing the moth to step on both positive and negative, completing the circuit. This will play either a single flute note or a short phrase of a song- This leads me to have two main questions.
- How many moths do people think would be appropriate to get my point across?
- Should I have it play single notes or short phrases of a song? If I choose a song, does anyone have any suggestions?
Here’s a diagram with explanations of my concept:
I think around 8 moths is a good amount but it depends on what size jar you’re using.
Short phrases of a song would capture my attention more especially if it was gentle beats, much like a delicate moth’s flight. -Maybe classical music?
Short phrases would make the person who guided the moths super happy when they land on command. For the number of moths I think it really depends on the jar and would need trial and error in order to find the right amount of interactions with the output.
I agree with some of the other commenters that having pieces of a song rather than just notes would be more satisfying for the user because a single note may be accidentally missed. Personally I associate creatures that fly like butterflies and birds with woodwind instruments, so maybe you can find pieces that feature flutes and such. As for the amount of moths I’m not gonna lie I don’t know much about them.
Out of curiosity, how are you going to close the jar, since most come with metal lids?
The Jar I got has a plastic lid!
I believe using short phrases of long ambient songs could work, as the possible lethargy of the bugs could lead to staggered awkward timing of clips.
I think 6 or so moths would be enough that they’re actively eating without overcrowding. For the sounds, I think a few notes of a windchime sound may have a nice ambience. 🙂
I cannot stress how much I like the idea that the installation actually plays itself. Just my personal opinion, but I could also imagine the piece be even better if there could be some interactive parts that involve the input from the audience. As the response to the artist question: 1. it would really depend on the actual trial and error process with the moth. 2. I think both would work very well, if the moth are touching the input very frequently, notes could work better and vice versa.
I think using an instrumental song without lyrics would be really pretty.
Maybe some piano sounds would be peaceful and fitting, and I think 5-6 moths would be good as moths can sometimes be big. I have a huge phobia of bugs but maybe your installation will change my perspective!
How do you plan on making the moths move in response to the light?
In my experience, moths respond by flying towards light (such as lightbulbs on streetlamps- look up next time you’re walking around, there’s always a swarm of them around the light! Its really weird and i’m not sure why they do that, but oh well). I only intend to use the piece for a short amount of time (2-3 minutes at a time), so the moths should respond in this way to the light the whole time I am using it.