Eight questions to a spider

Van een wereldwijze spin naar het wereldwijde web. Kunstenaar Oona Libens treedt in dialoog met Uttu, de achtpotige protagonist van haar voorstelling Spindle.

1 Spider

Uttu, I’ve chosen to work with you as the narrator of my show Spindle. Could you introduce yourself?

I was born 380 million years ago,
the queen of spinners and weavers.
I’ve seen all kinds of creatures crawling to and fro
but my stories are lost to sight for you, non-believers …

I spin, I spin on my spindle a string …
I weave and make a web of things.
It’s cryptic and elliptic, coded and arcane,
but some things are simply not made to explain.

2 Thread

I guess that is exactly what I would like to talk about. Can you tell us some more about your string?

The string, it twists, it twines, it curls and coils:
my unseen weapon!
It ties, it catches, it carries and holds
and all along the line our history unfolds …

My soft and silver silky thread
is stronger than steel, it’s miles ahead.
I know you’ve been searching for the secret of my wire,
it’s been haunting your dreams, it’s your one desire.

3 Technology

Could you tell me about how you have seen our earliest technology develop?

Agriculture or tools of stone
were not your earliest technologies,
but a delicate string of which were sewn
your veils, your sails and your golden fleece.

Spinning summoned meaning,
memoirs you recorded in weaving.
But materials more tough and stiff
replaced the soft and fluffy stuff.

What’s left? What made it to the chronicles?
No weaving women became canonical,
but the big hero and his lot,
his swords and his pennies wrote the plot.

4 Web

With your thread, you weave a web: a home, a catching device and a beautiful artwork.

My web is my technology,
extending all my senses.
Vibration stores my memory,
and triggers my defences.

I feel through feelers on my legs––
and spindle-legged I tread
the delicate patterns of my webs,
I can not see, but feel instead.

All woven things, hold big and small,
a web that ties and catches all.
As with the woven fabric and the arts,
the sum is greater than all its parts.

5 Automation

So weaving was our first (binary) technology and it was one of the first crafts that got automated. Why do things by hand when tools can help?

You speak of the time of big devices,
machines more precise and with lower prices.
The engine weaves numbers just as the loom weaves flowers
and it does in seconds what was first done in hours.

To your aid came the punched card,
a simple thing of zero and one
to make a pattern chequered or starred,
on-off, up-down, over-under, all or none.

By some mysterious magnetic force
your path has now changed its course.
And you have, by artificial means,
become the custodians of machines.

6 Computer

How did the loom become the computer? How can our tools think for us?

Another thing made up of wires
was what those punched cards inspired,
the mathematician Ada Lovelace
lay the first stones of your cyberspace.

Thinking is not merely subtraction and addition,
what about a strong intuition?
Some creatures are gifted with clairvoyance,
and I do believe I have a sixth sense.

You think I don’t make much sense
but your logic is quite toxic, no offence!
The ties are there nonetheless
It’s called web wisdom, I guess….

7 www

Your web and thread seem to be a perfect metaphor for our wired digital technology, do you agree?

I must say that I am terribly proud
that my crafts lie at the base of your virtual cloud.
You say it opens many new creative doors
to combine my web with that of yours.

It does sound like the better copy-paste,
but you can’t make nature in a haste.
The result, you say, is something augmented …
Or … was it fragmented?

8 Reset

We are at a crossroads where the lines between technology and nature are getting blurry. How do you feel related to artificial creatures? Do we still need nature?

You analyse my insides and make me gasp,
but perhaps there are things you cannot grasp?
Those AIs and me appear to be freaky, not from this world,
far and wide our webs have unfurled.

We both stem from a solitary root.
They’re about to become my substitute.
It has you under total hypnosis!
Can we not live in symbiosis?