Tomás Saraceno is an Argentine contemporary artist who has been working on "spiders" and "webs" for many years, hoping to reconstruct people's understanding of the universe and reflect on the living and perceptual environment under the suppression of capitalism. His latest giant sculpture, Releasing Air: How to Listen to the Universe in a Spider/Web, was featured in a special exhibition at The Shed at The New York's Emerging Arts Center, which is 39 meters in diameter and allows the audience to participate in this interactive experience guided by vibration.
Tomás Saraceno's work, the reason for the preference for spiders and spider webs, derived from the biological characteristics of the spider itself, most of the spiders rely on the construction of silk webs to communicate with the same species and other species, because the spider silk will carry predation, mating and other observational information when vibrating, so that they have a very keen perception of small vibrations and interventions.
This spring, he held a special exhibition of "Particular Matter(s)" at The Shed in New York, creating a huge sculpture with a diameter of 39 meters through two layers of barbed wire, "Releasing Air: How to Listen to the Universe in the Spider/Web", allowing the audience to wander around the web and feel the close connection between the body and the web and others, because as long as one person makes a movement in the spider web, it will make everyone else feel the shock.
Through the schematic diagram of the structure of his work, it can be seen that this work is also equipped with a special vibrator (shaker) to reproduce various sounds, and Tomás Saraceno divides the exhibition into four major chapters, including the vibration sound emitted by spiders, earthquake noises, the roar of vehicles... and other various sound signals, and the audience can also listen to the sounds that are difficult to hear but real on weekdays when they feel the pulse of the spider web. He hopes that through this giant spider web, the audience's perception at different levels will be opened, so that everyone can realize that everything in this world is related to each other and across species, between living and non-living things.