ABOUTAbout Yuga Tsukuda

I make artworks that combine insects and computers. I call this approach “Konchūta” (コンチュータ). My works include Cicada - Canon, which uses electrical stimulation to make cicadas play music with their calls, and Calmbots and Mushifude, in which cockroaches work together to move objects, draw pictures, and write characters.

More recently, I have been making displays using the structural coloration of scarab beetles. I combine projectors and polarizing film to direct light, adjusted by a computer, onto their bodies. The way I connect insects and computers has shifted from experiments that control movement through electrical stimulation to experiments that use the optical properties of the body itself.

When I treat an insect as a sensor or a display, the devices I use every day begin to look different. Where does a display begin and end? What separates a computer component from an insect’s body? I explore these questions by physically connecting them and seeing what happens.

I am interested not only in what an individual insect can do, but also in what becomes perceptible when many gather: cicada calls filling the surroundings, or countless beetles forming a single image. My attention has moved from individuals to groups and then to their environment. I also think about these relationships through the word mushi (蟲).