Evan Ziporyn
Composer, Professor of Music, MIT
Arachnophilia: Spiders and Spider Webs
Through storytelling, we describe a collaboration between science and art, focused on spiders and their complex webs, explore from multiple perspectives, and scales, on a journey from arachnophobia to arachnophilia. This work has spanned multiple institutions across the globe, and resulted in various outcomes ranging from computer models built off scanned webs, new sonification approaches, to instrumentation, and interactive installations, including jamming with spiders as partners in the creative process. By losing human language we explore the vibrational world the spider lives in, to understand nature in a non-human way. Looking to nature for insights and to bring back wisdom that has long been forgotten, we explore interfaces between human and animal intelligence, and explore the Anthropo-not-seen. We discuss relevant aspects such as effects of climate change, environmental change, and ecological aspects such as mass extinction events.
Composer/conductor/clarinetist Evan Ziporyn's music has taken him from Balinese temples to concert halls around the world. He has composed for and collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Brooklyn Rider, Maya Beiser, Ethel, Anna Sofie Von Otter, the American Composers Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Iva Bittova, Terry Riley, Don Byron, and Silkroad. From 1992-2012 he led the Bang on a Can All-stars; during that time he also founded Gamelan Galak Tika and performed regularly with the Steve Reich Ensemble. At MIT he is Founding Faculty Director of the Center for Art, Science and Technology, as well as Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music.
