Tomás puts his web inspired artwork on display
Jul 27 2010 The Journal
EVER wondered what it might feel like to be a very worried fly?
Well, Tomás Saraceno’s art installation at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art will give you some idea because it was modelled on the web of the venomous black widow spider (or latrodectus mactans, to give it its scientific name).
You put on the white plastic overshoes, venture into the brightly lit white cube and there it is, an inky web of extraordinary intricacy.
Even before you know that spiders’ webs were the inspiration for the piece, you will find yourself looking nervously around. Where is it, the eight-legged predator that spun this deadly cat’s cradle?
After establishing that the spider is not home you will then find yourself wondering how it was done, for this is one hugely elaborate creation.
It consists, you will learn, of 8,000 black strings connected by over 23,000 individually tied knots – and this is not the first time it has been displayed.
How on earth, you will wonder further, was it taken down and put back together again? It makes the Rubik’s Cube look like a piece of cake.
Fortunately for me, Lizzie Bracegirdle, a member of Baltic’s ever helpful Crew, was present to explain some of the intricacies of the work.
Lizzie went to Stockholm, where the installation was previously exhibited, to meet the artist and find out about his work.
She said he has worked with arachnologists (spider experts) and astrophysicists in pursuit of his artistic explorations, which also venture into the realms of science.
The title of the work, 14 Billion, relates to the spider webs but also to the universe and particularly, according to Lizzie, to a galaxy consisting of dark matter which was only discovered in 2002, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Examples of black widow spider webs are on show behind the Baltic installation and an example of the laser equipment used to map its many strings and knots for a computer programme.
The Argentinean artist, keen to take his exploration further afield, has been given permission by Nasa to send spiders into space in 2013 to see what their webs would look like when spun in zero gravity.
Saraceno has done other extraordinary projects, as you will see.
Also in the exhibition is a six-minute video film called Space Elevator, dating from 2009.
The artist went up into the sky in a tent suspended beneath a hot air balloon, the aim being to ascend three kilometres to space.
It looks hair-raising, at the very least, although the horses grazing down below seem to have been unperturbed.
Tomás Saraceno’s 14 Billion is on display at Baltic until October 10 as part of the summer programme.
So far, said Lizzie, it has been very well received.
