Wunderbugs

Be it at home or at office, one day you might be able to have a relaxing, high-quality digital soundscape, peacefully played by our future eco-companions – insects. Things that happen when you put together an architect, an entomologist, a sound designer and a composer. Seen at Milan Design Week, Wunderbugs is an interactive wooden pavilion with sensors that collects environmental stimuli and allows insects to modulate digital music.

  Designed by OFL Architecture and curated by Francesco Lipari, Wunderbugs was released for the first time at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome during the second edition of Maker Faire Europe. Six spherical interactive ecosystems are equipped with Arduino and sensors for motion, humidity, temperature and sunlight intensity. This data is used to modulate in real time an insect musical composition that can be listened to with headphones and a mixer.

The selected insects range from bees to silkworms, from crickets to flies and cockroaches. “They are very useful insects for farming and eating, and they all have an active role in pollination”, entomologist Chiara Settanni explains. “Each insect-bowl features the ideal ecosystem for that specific species. We just added some red shades for protection from sun rays. Some of them can be observed during the day, while others, like cockroaches, start ‘playing’ at night. Strangely, people seem to be extremely at ease around these insects, you can really tell that something is slowly changing in our society.”

Francesco Lipari, curator of the project, explains how the whole concept is an attempt to put architectural thinking at service of other disciplines – like entomology, for instance – stimulating new interactions and possibilities within the domestic scale. “Wunderbugs is an interactive pavilion, a sound garden where humidity, temperature, wind speed and visitors’ proximity provide signals that are translated into a background music track”, Lipari explains. “To provide additional music signals, each of the six insect bowls corresponds to a manual switch that can be turned on and off, depending on the soundscape you want to create. Through six switches it is possible to add the deep bass rhythms of the bumblebees or the acute accents of grasshoppers”.

Wunderbugs
Program: interactive pavilion
Design: OFL Architecture, Francesco Lipari
Entomologist: Chiara Settanni
Interaction designer: Marco Scalet
Sound design: Enrico Piraino
Communication: Viviana Cannizzo
Year: 2016–2017