Try​ to imagine what it is like to be a fungus. Not a mushroom, pushing up through damp soil overnight or delicately forcing itself out through the bark of a rotting log: that would be like imagining the grape rather than the vine.

On the Far Side of the Marchlands, Berlin (Feb 1st - March 26th)Exhibition opening Wednesday, February 1st (opening from 6pm) - March 26thErnst Schering Foundation> Facebook Event Page>

More info: additivism.org/marchlands

with works by Morehshin Allahyari, Cathrine Disney, Keeley Haftner, Brittany Ransom and Daniel Rourke

A ‘marchland’ is a medieval term for a space between two or more realms; a zone betwixt the control of states, in which alternate rules of law and conduct might apply. On the Far Side of the Marchlands explores the potential of radically new topographies – “intertwined histories and overlapping territories” – composed of hybrid realms of experience, culture and materiality.

On the Far Side of the Marchlands - an exhibition and collaboration between Morehshin Allahyari, Cathrine Disney, Keeley Haftner, Brittany Ransom, and Daniel Rourke - speaks to the contemporary desire for transformation. The exhibition features a zoo of hybrid figures: from stupid/intelligent insects to short-sighted/forward-thinking posthumans; from chimera materials that ooze, respire and transmute, to murky politics impossible to clarify as either positive or negative. On the Far Side of the Marchlands expands on the material and conceptual hybridity expressed in The 3D Additivist Cookbook: a compendium of provocative projects by over one hundred artists, activists, and theorists concerned with ‘Additivist’ practices. The exhibition and Cookbook invite visitors to look beyond boundaries, speaking to a growing need for radical forms of transformation.The 3D Additivist Cookbook, conceived and edited by Daniel Rourke & Morehshin Allahyari, is also presented in the exhibition alien matter (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2 February – 5 March 2017), curated by Inke Arns. On the Far Side of the Marchlands is a partner exhibition to the special exhibition alien matter, co-financed by Berlin LOTTO Foundation within the scope of ever elusive – thirty years of transmediale, supported by the British Council.

Imagine constructing a building with no blueprints or architects, and no inkling of what the finished edifice should look like. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, and yet that’s what ants and termites do all the time—and the results speak for themselves.

Your future windows, walls, and possibly boats will be made of ants — or at least of an ant-like substance. New research shows why ants classify as both a solid and a liquid, and why they’d make the best self-repairing building material.

You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. To kill spam, email filters might need to act a bit more like ants.

Researchers have changed the size of a handful of Florida ants by chemically modifying their DNA, rather than by changing its encoded information.

Deborah Gordon spent the morning of August 27 watching a group of harvester ants foraging for seeds outside the dusty town of Rodeo, N.M. Long before the first rays of sun hit the desert floor, a group of patroller ants was already on the move.

Meanwhile, Richard Dawkins was picking another fight.

Normally, this would not be an occasion worthy of comment. The best way to distinguish between Professor Dawkins’ waking and sleeping states is probably on the basis of how contentious he is at a given time. Nevertheless, I’m compelled to say something for two reasons. First, this particular fight happens to be taking place right in my proverbial (and professional) wheelhouse; second, I’ve just finished my annual re-reading of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park duology.

That last bit requires some explanation, I know. As I mentioned in my last post, Crichton spent most of his later career playing the role of anti-establishment gadfly. For The Lost World, his sequel to Jurassic Park, he set his sights against the theory of natural selection. Indeed, the centerpiece of the book—almost literally, coming precisely halfway through the page count—is a chapter entitled “Problems of Evolution,” wherein Crichton asked the following about the

Animation of first 200 steps of Langton’s ant

Once the fungus invades its victim’s body, it’s already too late. The invader spreads through the host in a matter of days. The victim, unaware of what is happening, becomes driven to climb to a high spot. Just before dying, the infected body—a zombie—grasps a perch as the mature fungal invader erupts from the back of the zombie’s head to rain down spores on unsuspecting victims below, starting the cycle again. This isn’t the latest gross-out moment from a George A. Romero horror film; it is part of a very real evolutionary arms race between a parasitic fungus and its victims, ants.

One zombie by itself is not necessarily very scary, but in B movies from, Night of the Living Dead to Zombieland, Hollywood’s animated corpses have a nasty habit of creating more of the walking dead. Controlled by some inexplicable force, perhaps an intensely virulent pathogen, the main preoccupation of a zombie is making other zombies.

Rain may seem a harmless nuisance to us humans, but for ants, it's a big deal. They can get trapped by just a single drop and risk drowning. Paradoxically, it's by mimicking liquids that ants manage to conquer them.

In the video above, Micah Streiff and his team from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta captured writhing groups of ants behaving just like liquids. Working as a group they can turn themselves into a "raft" as they seek dry land or travel down a surface following the same physical rules as a viscous liquid. Thankfully, they haven't been caught mimicking your morning coffee just yet.

Our fascination with ants has led to engaging stories about them, from the Iliad’s Myrmidons to Antz’s Z, as well as a growing body of research by biologists. Though the ant colonies of fable and film often are invested with the hierarchical organization characteristic of human societies, a real ant colony operates without direction or management. New research is showing us how ant colonies get things done without anyone being in charge. Ants, it turns out, have much to teach us about the decentralized networks that operate in many biological systems, in which local interactions produce global behavior, without the guidance of any central intelligence or authority.

Many of our stories about ants concern how hard they work and how they are reconciled to the anomie of life as a pawn in a larger system. Sometimes we imagine that the ants like it that way. Proverbs 6:6 admonishes the sluggard to emulate the hard-working ants. In Aesop’s fables, the ants show perseverance and foresight. Ho

What do you think about when you think about ants? An aerial view perhaps, looking down at a line of ants moving along a trail. Go closer. If you stay with it, your view may twist, your ants grow, become singular, each an alien creature, somehow militarised. As primitives we ate them, they were our crunch, and now they are lodged in our subconscious. We know their noise in the soil, even if we do not acknowledge it. The mandibles dominate, snipping, giving the ant its name in Old English, “aemette”, from the proto-Germanic ai mait, meaning to cut away, or to cut off. Even in that early time in Anglo-Saxon lands there was a grim sense of ants swarming, and now we know that army ants move in waves of a million or more, eating through anything in their path, someone staked and tied to the ground, for instance.

The blank eyes, the glands under the jawbone secreting pheromones that signal alarm, laid down by foraging ants and reinforced by following ants to show the shortest possible route

Parasites commonly manipulate host behaviour, and among the most dramatic examples are diverse fungi that cause insects to die attached to leaves. This death-grip behaviour functions to place insects in an ideal location for spore dispersal from a dead body following host death. Fossil leaves record many aspects of insect behaviour (feeding, galls, leaf mining) but to date there are no known examples of behavioural manipulation. Here, we document, to our knowledge, the first example of the stereotypical death grip from 48 Ma leaves of Messel, Germany, indicating the antiquity of this behaviour. As well as probably being the first example of behavioural manipulation in the fossil record, these data support a biogeographical parallelism between mid Eocene northern Europe and recent southeast Asia.

A spider that only eats ants is choosy about which body parts of its prey it devours based on their nutritional value.

These new findings are the first to demonstrate that "specialist" predators relying on a single food source might have evolved feeding behaviors to maximize what they get out of meal time, the researchers say.

"We found that these spiders do have to balance their nutrient intake by choosing different body parts of their exclusive ant prey," said Stano Pekár, an assistant professor of ecology and zoology at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic and lead author of the research published in the April 15 issue of the journal Animal Behaviour.

When chowing down on ants, the spiders consistently began with the protein-packed front parts before getting to the fattier hind segment, called a gaster or abdomen. The picky eating seemed to pay off: Spiders reared on just front-end ant pieces grew faster, bigger and lived longer than those served only gasters or even whole an

Some animals can instinctively solve navigational problems that have baffled humans for centuries. Now, researchers are uncovering how.

The nervous system of the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis, with around 100,000 neurons, is about 1 millionth the size of a human brain. Yet in the featureless deserts of Tunisia, this ant can venture over 100 meters from its nest to find food without becoming lost. Imagine randomly wandering 20 kilometers in the open desert, your tracks obliterated by the wind, then turning around and making a beeline to your starting point—and no GPS allowed! That’s the equivalent of what the desert ant accomplishes with its scant neural resources. How does it do it?

This text was read out loud on the 21st November, as part of the Volatile Dispersal: Festival of Art-Writing, held at The Whitechapel Gallery Thanks must go to Maria Fusco and Francesco Pedraglio for asking me to take part…

In one of the most uncanny revelations in science fiction, the protagonist of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine awakes from his anthropic slumber: the museum is filled with artefacts not from his past, but from his future. Like the Time Traveller it is easy to forget, that however hard we try to walk beyond a given path, we will always tend to inscribe another in our wake. ——– I discovered the ants trailing like gunpowder across my kitchen floor. Before I had time to think I had vacuumed up a thousand. Yet they kept coming, tending to resurge where last I had punished them; coursing like a rainless cloud on the exact same trajectory each time. ——–

The French tourist attraction Lascaux II is like the 1980 family movie Superman II because: 1. It’s a translation of archetypes, a kind of ode to idealism. 2. Some people claim that it is better than the original. 3. The special effects are dated, but they still pack a punch. 4. It cost millions to produce. 5. All it is is editing. In 1963 Lascaux cave, a network of subterranean tunnels scrawled with some of the earliest known Upper Palaeolithic human art, was closed to public scrutiny. Since its discovery in 1940 around a thousand visitors had trampled through the site per day, bringing with them a toxic mix of exhaled CO2 and greasy, groping fingers. In 1983 the Lascaux II replica was opened to the public. The tourist attraction contains a faithful recreation of the textured surface of the original cave upon which 75% of the precious art has been meticulously copied. In the late 1970s Richard Donner, a talented director best known for his earlier film The Omen, was fired by the producers of the Superman franchise. Donner’s attempt to craft and create two Superman movies back to back had become hampered by production disagreements. A new director, Richard Lester, was drafted in to piece together the unfinished second film from remnants that Richard Donner had left scattered on the cutting-room floor. Lester’s Superman II was released in 1980. Richard Donner’s name was absent from the credits. The original Lascaux cave rests in darkness again now, killing the time its simulation has reclaimed from toxic breath and greasy, groping fingers. The addition of a ‘state-of-the-art’ air conditioning system to the Lascaux complex is thought to be responsible for a virulent, black fungus now invading the site. Experts are looking for a solution to the new problem they helped introduce. Richard Donner finally released a ‘faithful’ version of Superman II in late 2006, a version for which Richard Lester received no credit. The two films contain around 75% of the same material, in vaguely different orders. ——– Somewhere unseen to me a billowing sack of protoplasm with the head of a Queen was giving birth to its hundredth clone of the day. But unlike its brethren this clone would never grow towards the daylight. A dark shroud of worker ants would drag poison into its womb: a deadly meal upon which the nest would feast. ——–

Most fire ant bait is an insecticide and an attractive ant food combination made up of processed corn grits coated with soybean oil. Baits are taken into the colony by ants searching for food. The bait is distributed to other members of the colony through the exchange of food known as trophallaxis. Although several fire ant baits are available, there are two main types: insect growth regulators and actual toxins. Hydramethylnon bait is a toxin that disrupts the ant’s ability to convert food to energy. Spinosad bait is a biorational toxin derived through the fermentation of a soil dwelling bacteria. Abamectin, the toxin in Raid® Fire Ant Bait is also the result of the fermentation of soil dwelling bacteria. Fipronil bait disrupts the insect’s nervous system through contact and stomach action. Fenoxycarb, or methoprene, and pyriproxyfen are all insect growth regulators that prevent queens from producing new workers. One key to the efficiency of baits is that the insecticide gets to the queen. 1 ——– In my local supermarket was an aisle devoted to domestic murder. Sticky traps infused with cockroach friendly aromas; circular baiting baths filled with a saccharine mosquito-drowning dew. Tablets for prevention, sprays for elimination and piles of bug-nets, bug-bats, bug-bombs and bug-poisons. ——–

In a central scene from the 1991 film, Terminator II, Sarah Conner attempts escape from the high-security asylum in which she has been incarcerated. For a patient, deemed to be dangerously unstable, an asylum is a rigid tangle of limits, barriers, locked-doors and screeching alarms. Sarah Conner’s escape is notable because of its affirmation of the paths of the asylum. Far from moving beyond it, Conner uses the rigidity of the system to aid her movement through the building. From the very beginning of the scene Conner’s dancing feet, her balletic violence, inscribe into the constraints of the asylum a pattern of the purest desire. A paper-clip, a broom and a container of bleach – all systematic of order and closure – become in turn a lock-pick, a weapon and a kidnapping ploy. A key, usually a symbol of access and movement between limits, is snapped in its lock and instantly becomes a barrier. Only upon the arrival of The Terminator and her son, John, does Sarah’s freedom over the asylum finally ebb back towards the traditional limits of fear and isolation.

——– I bought a box of Raid ant bait. The compound eyes and hideous mandibles of a cartoon ant stared back at me from the package. This caricature, designed to demonise the ants, instead expressed their human-like determination. A determination that I would use against them. A determination bound up and offered to them like a spoonful of Trojan horses. ——–

Though the radiation from kryptonite is detrimental to all life, it is especially harmful to Kryptonians such as Superman. Kryptonite is the ore of kryptonium, and usually has a green hue. Although, in its red form, kryptonite is perhaps at its most unpredictable. Red kryptonite turned Superman into a powerless giant and a dwarf. Turned him into a terrifying Kryptonian dragon. Red kryptonite drove Superman insane for a period of forty-eight hours. Made Superman unable to see anything green; grow incredibly long hair, nails, and beard. Grow fat; gain the ability to read thoughts; grow a third eye in the back of his head. Lose his invulnerability along the left side of his body. Split into an evil Superman and a good Clark Kent. Become apathetic. Be rendered unable to speak or write anything but Kryptonese. Grow an extra set of arms. Become clumsy. Swap bodies with the person nearest him. Transfer his powers. Rapidly age. Go through multiple personality changes. And have his skin rendered transparent overloading him with solar power. Red kryptonite made flames shoot out of Superman’s mouth and endowed him with the power to make his wishes come true. Red kryptonite transformed Superman into an infant with the mind of an adult. Robbed Superman of his super powers and afflicted him with total amnesia. Red kryptonite once endowed Superman with the head and antennae of a giant ant.2

——– I set down the bait, causing the trail of ants to divert and invert. After a few moments of disorder the nest plotted a new trajectory: the black cloud bleeding into yellow poison. Ants never anticipate. They only creep onwards, solving each problem as it comes to them. Surviving because survival is what ants do. ——–

It is written that when the Maya people of The New World were first set upon by the Spanish cavalry it was spiritual confusion that hastened their demise. To their eyes the seething onslaught of man and horse was made of but one, new and terrifying, species of creature. In the West we might call these creatures Centaurs: liminal entities fused of two distinct species. To the Maya the border between God and beast was breached by the Spanish invaders, truly alien beings who in all but one generation would subsume the Maya under a wave of technology, disease and colonial ascent. At the time these stories first made their way across the Atlantic ocean the Mayan Centaurs would have been seen as examples of a primitive world view. Today we tend to believe we have a clearer conception of history, one not marred by colonial aspirations or archaic stereotypes. And yet, like Edwin Hubble, staring out at an ever expanding universe, the more we examine these events the more they seem to accelerate away from us. Like the Maya we are constrained by our perceiving eye, by the cultural reservoir within which our imaginations swim. It is as though the very fidelity of reality is determined at its point of viewing, that in some sense we will always see Centaurs where really there sit men on their horses. ——– By morning the upturned plastic mushroom was empty of its poison, as piece by piece the ant bait had been dragged, carried and manoeuvred into the nest. In places a fine yellow dust now stained the kitchen’s cracked linoleum. A dust composed of corn grits soaked with delicious, deadly poison.

1 Extracted from University of Arkansas web archive: http://tinyurl.com/6xzob2

2 Dialogue text compiled from online sources: wiki.superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Red_Kryptonite, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptonite & supermanhomepage.com/comics/comics.php?topic=comics-sfaq#Q34

A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

What's more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together.

Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.

These introduced Argentine ants are renowned for forming large colonies, and for becoming a significant pest, attacking native animals and crops.