Last week, I visited Protiberia in Villamalea to begin the Quiet Storm: Music for Insects project. With Quiet Storm, we want to use sound and vibration to enhance the mating process of the Tenebrio molitor beetle. Using insects in agriculture can improve sustainability and open up new avenues for economic development in rural areas. At the same time, Quiet Storm encourages us to consider beetles as sensitive beings.
During this first visit, the Protiberia team showed me the farm and all the beetles’ life stages. I recorded the sounds of the insects in both their mealworm and adult beetle stages, using a contact microphone and a geophone. The recordings have a quality reminiscent of ASMR. You can see the video below to get a glimpse of what I did on-site.
In the next phase, I want to create music designed to encourage the beetles to mate. This is an experiment, and we’ll see if it works—but that’s precisely the point of art-science residencies like this.