The Year of the Cicada

Britta Johnson - Share This Place [excerpt] (2003)

Empathy with bugs is rarely so emotional. Until they swarm into our living rooms or onto our albums, we pay little attention. But ignorance of their presence does not indicate a lack of a relationship. The word ignorance is rooted in an active complicity of ignoring something that exists. Insects intimately inhabit the dark spaces in our houses and the crevices of our bodies. Their hardened fragility is able to penetrate the indestructible walls we construct around ourselves only to die in the middle of the floor. If we take the time to zoom in, we marvel at their relatively super-human strength and Odyssean diligence, but are confused by their foreign anatomy and frightening futility.

This flexing of perspective inspires tremendous human art, including Yoko Ono's Odyssey and watching Lucifugia Thigmotaxis through a View Master. From under the soil during this year of the cicada is born another inspect-inspired project; a collaboration between the quirky subtleties of Mirah, the adventurous instrumentation of Spectratone International, and the stop motion animation of Britta Johnson. And it's amazing.

Mirah & Spectratone International - Gestation of the Beetle (mp3)

Don't appreciate insects? Try this one, it's irresistibly relevant...

Mirah & Spectratone International - Community (mp3)