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What happens when you pour molten aluminium into an anthill?
- aembleton 11y agoHere's a video of the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xvsxarw-J0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xvsxarw-J0
- jacquesm 11y agoAnts are incredible. The variety is absolutely enormous, in Panama in an apartment building on the 8th floor I stayed in for a while there were ants so small you could barely see them with the naked eye, and down on the ground right in front of the building were ants that were 10mm+. The leafcutter ant paths there would look like conveyor belts running back and forth with slices of leaves from bushes, I could watch them for hours.
- jostmey 11y agoSomething about pouring molten metal on an ant colony just feels wrong.
- voidz 11y agoEverything about it feels wrong.
- collyw 11y agoEver had a colony of ants invade your house?
- goldenkey 11y agoYes/No. What's the difference how he answers your question. You're absolutely the reason why our politics and logical thinking of our citizens suffer. People who think that asking a "wiseass" question suffices for actual ethics/moral compass. Here let me try this brainless questionnary approach to rhetoric. Tell me if I'm up to your level of quality. ------ I've had raccoons raid my trash bin. Should I slice the next raccoon up and turn him into a "Rorschach test"?
- grayclhn 11y ago> You're absolutely the reason why our politics and logical thinking of our citizens suffer. People who think that asking a "wiseass" question suffices for actual ethics/moral compass. This is not a constructive response.
- goldenkey 11y ago> This is not a constructive response. Hm, this is not a constructive response either.
- coldtea 11y ago>You're absolutely the reason why our politics and logical thinking of our citizens suffer. People who think that asking a "wiseass" question suffices for actual ethics/moral compass. Perhaps you're overthinking it? It's insects. For humanity it has been a non-issue killing them for the entirety of our existence. What's next? "Is it ethical to kill cancer cells?".
- goldenkey 11y agoThat's the kind of thinking that when extended by induction, supports killing of all sorts of things. Insects might be annoying but as humans all we have over them is our ability to build, shape the tera, and command respect of intellect by the deeds we do. The fact that it is hardly necessary is the main facet here. We should not be killing and destroying homes for pleasure or entertainment. Unfortunately the pleasure part is already being done in the form of eating animals, so it's hard to argue a facet of morality that 99% of the world espouses with.
- coldtea 11y ago>That's the kind of thinking that when extended by induction, supports killing of all sorts of things. And that's totally fine. Nature also kills "all sorts of things", has all sorts of things killing each other, and could even wipe out the planet tomorrow with a huge comet or something... Note that every time you wash your hands you're killing millions of germs...
- anc84 11y agoThat's not a good analogy. Molten metal invading the ant habitat kills them. Ant invading your habitat annoys you.
- goldenkey 11y agoBut it annoys him A LOT! How dare indiginous life on this planet invade his artificially built home that happens to have been built on the habitats of others animals..
- coldtea 11y agoThat's something only someone isolated from nature, and living in an "artificially built home" would say. People living close to nature need to defend their habitats from "indigenous life", from rats to ants and all kinds of pests all the time.
- alphapapa 11y agoHomo sapiens are indigenous life on this planet. From a neutral perspective, homo sapiens' "nests" are no more artificial than an anthill. And when an ant colony invades an already-existing house--indeed, how dare they.
- collyw 11y agoMost people I know poison the ants when they are in the house.
- DrScump 11y agoIf you watch carefully, not a single ant flees the mound or is visible anywhere near. Fire ants abandon their mounds when the colony moves. For an analog: if an abandoned stable burns down, no horses are harmed.
- nawariata 11y agoThe result is cool, but screw people doing that.
- twelve40 11y agodid you read the part where it says: These are the red imported fire ants (RIFA) which are harmful to the environment and their nests are exterminated by the millions in the United States using poisons, gasoline and fire, boiling water they are apparently doing the environment a favor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant#Countermeasures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant#Counterm...
- goldenkey 11y agoStill a disgusting practice. You can go ahead and say the tusk on your wall is from an elephant hunt that you paid 15k for which went to starving African children. Everyone is still going to be disgusted by the fact that you killed an elephant, or killed 10 million ants, for your fancy shmancy art piece.
- StavrosK 11y agoHow about if you kill them without producing an art piece in the process, because they're a pest? Is that also immoral?
- goldenkey 11y agoI believe it's in bad taste. We don't make art out of executed criminals. In the same vain, making art out of pests is reprehensible.
- StavrosK 11y agoBad taste yes, but bad taste is subjective. Morality (should be) objective, so it's one thing to say "I don't like this" (I don't like it either), and another thing to say "nobody should like this".
- elcapitan 11y agoOnce the art market for pouring molten aluminium into anthills is saturated, we'll pour molten aluminium into an elephants digestive system, because that would look cool as well.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- goldenkey 11y agoWe'll only do it to the circus elephants that refuse to obey their commands. And the rest of the body, the meat will goto charity!
- yk 11y agoAfter consideration [1], pretty awesome. [1] A) Individual ants are not protected by ethics in a way that outweighs the creation of art. B) A anthill is probably not significant enough to warrant protection by environmental concerns.
- themartorana 11y ago1A is pretty interesting. It's not a statement of fact, though, and your arbitrary moral line probably doesn't line up with everyone else's. The sculptures are cool indeed, but I'm not sure killing hundreds or thousands of living things for something unnecessary lines up with my arbitrary moral line. Edit: yes, I know they're an invasive species, but parent's comment wasn't about that.
- fulafel 11y agoThis kind of killing is generally accepted in society, sadly. People eat meat for sensory enjoyment, not out of necessity.
- goldenkey 11y agoThe worst part of it too, is denial. You'll have some that "their body needs meat" and others that say being a vegetarian is "too expensive." Yet it's been shown time and time again, that especially in this day and age, it's pretty trivial to be a vegan, let alone a vegetarian. The fact is that people are pretty weak when it comes to understanding their rather wicked sensory addiction to meat flavors. It is beyond me, how someone could say with a straight face that they trade torture and death for extra pepper. I'm inclined to believe that denial of the alternatives is the primary vehicle for the evil.
- kefka 11y agoAnd I eat meat because grains, legumes, and starches kill me if I eat them. I was an omnivore that would eat pretty much anything. Not anymore, but by medical requirement. I'm T2 diabetic. I map my blood sugar and can show you what happens if I eat 20g carbs (hint: its not pretty). Now, I also think that killed plants also think and feel, just not in the timeframe we do. Their chemical triggers are their communication. Their neural net... I'm still not sure, but I'm sure there are plant biologists whom study this.
- bdz 11y agoThese are Red imported fire ants, they are considered to be a pest so nothing wrong with this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant#Countermeasures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant#Counterm...
- anotheryou 11y agothey also do it on native colonies: e.g. "Ant Type: Field Ants (Formica pallidefulva)" among others. (all those less "rooty" casts)
- goldenkey 11y agoIt starts with one justification. And then ends with another. Even if it was just pests, it's in bad taste to create art through termination of life.
- sjwright 11y agoDoes that include art that involves plants? Ink made from bacteria?
- goldenkey 11y agoOf course an HNers gonna ask something like this. Plants have no mechanisms to experience time at a metabolism even near the slowest of animals (ie tortoise, elephant.) Nothing close to a nervous system. When you find out the first pain-bearing plant, don't comment here, go get your Nobel Prize. Don't waste your breath on a specious argument.
- anc84 11y agoLink-bait title. The destination is web shop, not a proper answer.
- rincebrain 11y agoSince I don't believe any of them are for sale, I don't think it's a "shop". It's a gallery, with videos, of what transpires.
- obelisk_ 11y agoIMO the pictures on the site answer the question. Title is fine.
- social_quotient 11y agoNot an endorsement but this is cool. 10 tons of concrete http://youtu.be/lFg21x2sj-M http://youtu.be/lFg21x2sj-M
- oceanofsolaris 11y agoThis looks rather nice and neatly displays an aspect of ant colonies that is hard to see otherwise. When done for research, I think that this is awesome. Have a look at the concrete pouring of a leafcutter ant colony (which is huge and has a very interesting layout) if you find this interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFg21x2sj-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFg21x2sj-M But then, having this memorial to an ant colony extinguished by hot molten metal sitting in my room strikes me as a bit macabre. At least intuitively, I don't even feel that sorry for the ant colony (which I think is the relevant organism eradicated here, not the individual ants), but turning its death into a work of art still feels tasteless. But then, I have ants as pets (I can only recommend to do that, it is not too much work but very interesting), so maybe I am overly sentimental here.
- VLM 11y agoThe point of this is being missed because of holiness spiral signalling noise. Yes yes, you need to show off your superior ethics because that's a competitive market, you've done so, now get out of the way of the "real" discussion. The story at the end of the contact page (just click on 'contact') is the actual gold for HN. In summary, the life story of this "startup" begins with No demand, no money, no market. Post videos, one of which gets 6M views per day. Now the market is maybe 300 requests, and the artist claims most of the 300 are not responding and paying up when he's got shippable product. Its quite possible world demand for the product is only the 30 or so produced. So there are startup lessons here. At least some of them: 1) Really cool videos and gets 6M daily views and tons of press can mean as few as a couple dozen sales. Conversion rate matters. 2) Artist thinks he's in the business of making art pieces, but no body is buying them such that he's offering to give them to science museums. Artist is actually in the monetizing viral videos business where he makes videos 6M people per day watch, while someone is selling those viewers cars and diet sodas or whatever is advertised. All the money is being made in his online videos, not his product. 3) Production rate is critical. Artist claims the interest he's got, weak as it is, is none the less so far in advance of production speed that it would take years to catch up. Scaling does matter! 4) Don't market something you can't ship for years. Maybe his conversion rate would be higher if he shipped when it was a "thing" not months to years later. To some extent if you read the contact page this is a stereotypical startup failure story that we see every day on HN, its just this startup was doing strange things with liquid aluminum instead of wrapping someone else's project in bootstrap or writing copycat CRUD frontends or whatever is momentarily trendy for the entitled. There is at least some commonality in startup failure across the business world. This story was an interesting read. Go ahead, click "contact" and read it!
- DrScump 11y agoIf E.O. Wilson ever finds this artist, he can expect a beatdown with a cane.