I originally planned on making the ant colony out of a block of material called Ytong. As I understand it, it’s an especially porous type of concrete that is easy to carve. However, i couldn’t source it easily, so I had to go back to the drawing board. I was put off by the cost and mess of buying, melting and forming paraffin wax, so I settled on teaching myself how to 3D model in Blender and running a 3d printer instead.

I learned a lot with Mark 1. Everything from the shape of the tunnels to the filament material, was a misfire.

The Mark 2, featured on this site, is a huge improvement. I added recesses for removable windows, a more natural cave structure (the “skeleton” of which was produced with custom Python code that I then enhanced with manual modeling), and an “overworld” that was meticulously designed with Blender’s powerful geometry nodes feature. It’s quite literally better in every way.

I printed on a BAMBU labs P1S printer (courtesy of the Animal Inspired Movement and Robotics Lab where I also work on the mCLARI) with matte white PLA. The orange window pieces (designed to evoke cellar automata and the set design of 2001: A Space Odyssey) were cut on a 75 watt laser cutter at the Boulder Public Library’s BLDG 61 makerspace.

Ants are not people’s first idea of an amazing pet. In fact, I know more than one person who has had a rough run-in with a biting, stinging colony of ants. However, I could never shake the appreciation I had for ants (and every other creepy crawly) that I developed as a kid playing out in my backyard.

So, I wanted to create something that would help draw people in closer to a somewhat off-putting creature, and maybe share some of the fascination I have with the small, the overlooked, and the pesky animals that often surround us.

My (rather disappointing) experience with Sea Monkeys as a kid taught me something valuable: a fantastical backstory can endear even the most alien-looking animals to countless people around the world. If comic book ads with smiling Atlantean mermonkeys can make kids beg their parents for a plastic aquarium filled with brine shrimp, then I should have no problem rehabilitating ants’ image with an amazing backstory of their own.

I suppose I settled on a moon colony because it engenders nostalgic images of the space race and retrofuturism, and I’ve always had a bit of an artistic obsession with it.

Yes! A core part of the design of the Lunar Colony is that there is a theremin nestled inside the main body. This feature really encourages people to get up close and personal with the insects inside.

For those who don’t know, a theremin is “the only instrument you play by not touching it”. Traditionally made out of bulky electronics- the theremin inside the base is built from a microcontroller and programmed in C.

The ATmega microcontroller collects and processes proximity data from capacitive touch sensors on a breakout board. The viewers proximity to the two side walls without windows plays chords (the midi synthesizer is polyphonic) in C Mixolydian. A low drone in the background helps give the music a spacey feel.

The Moon Fiends themselves will play music alongside you. An ant’s capacitance is relatively small, but when the colony has a critical mass congregating at specific caverns, the microcontroller will detect their presence and add to the melody.