Neri Oxman has released a film of a silkworm-woven pavilion in Italy, in which the insects acted "not only as construction workers but also as designer".
The American-Israeli designer created the seven-minute-long movie for a website launched to digitally present the projects on show at the Material Ecology exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
The exhibition opened in February this year featuring a body of works by her Mediated Matter Group research department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but was forced to close due to the coronavirus pandemic.
A large robotic, loom-like jig was installed in a fabrication facility in Abano Term
The film shows for the first time the making of the Silk Pavilion II, which was the centrepiece of the New York showcase. It begins in Italy with a facility in Teolo where 17,532 silkworms were sourced for the project, and then moves onto the installation of a large robotic, loom-like jig in a fabrication facility in Abano Term, where the silkworm-spun pavilion was made in 10 days.
After the jig is built, a soluble white knit is stretched across to form a base for the silkworms to lay their silk. The kinetic jig was programmed to periodically rotate in a clockwise motion so that the silkworms are forced to work in an upward spinning motion and lay evenly over the structure.
The jig rotated clockwise so that the silkworms were forced to work in an upward spinning motion
Oxman said this process provides an alternative ...