
What happens when you pour molten aluminium into an anthill? - jackgavigan
http://anthillart.com
======
jostmey
Something about pouring molten metal on an ant colony just feels wrong.

~~~
collyw
Ever had a colony of ants invade your house?

~~~
goldenkey
Yes/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"?

~~~
alphapapa
> You're absolutely the reason why our politics and logical thinking of our
> citizens suffer. People who think that asking a "wiseass" question...

What do you think _you 're_ doing?

He asked a reasonable question that provided context and counterpoint to the
original assertion, which _advances the discussion._ You posted a reactionary,
knee-jerk response, driving the level of discussion into the ground, and
accusing _him_ of being in the wrong.

You are trolling.

~~~
goldenkey
I was not trolling. The question he asked was a baseless setup for anecdotal
personal attacks. I simply added a tangential point to the conversation.
Asking a question like that only serves to debate by way of cheap anecdotes.

"Well if you DID experience an ant colony invading your home, you would change
the value of your binary view"

Its a cheap shot and I'd actually take your entire comment and point it at the
unreasonably coy question intended to create a rift in what should be
objective logic.

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elcapitan
Once 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.

~~~
goldenkey
We'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!

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oceanofsolaris
This 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.

~~~
chei0aiV
Why is everyone assuming ants were killed in the process? There are plenty of
abandoned ant colonies in the world.

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bdz
These 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#Counterm...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant#Countermeasures)

~~~
anotheryou
they also do it on native colonies: e.g. "Ant Type: Field Ants (Formica
pallidefulva)" among others. (all those less "rooty" casts)

~~~
goldenkey
It 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
Does that include art that involves plants? Ink made from bacteria?

~~~
goldenkey
Of 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.

~~~
sjwright
I can only trust you'll be so considerate to a nest of termites that infests
your house.

~~~
goldenkey
Only if they take their shoes off at the door.

------
jacquesm
Ants 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.

------
VLM
The 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!

------
yk
After 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.

~~~
goldenkey
"protected by ethics." Who's ethics? The law had slaves at 3/5ths a person at
one point.

Generally, a way not to be an ass, is to avoid taking life unecessarily. These
art pieces are cool but I'm pretty sure no comprehensive set of ethics
supports taking life for sake of entertainment or "coolness."

I find it disgusting.

~~~
yk
> Who's ethics?

Mine, I am not speaking for some higher power.

> Generally, a way not to be an ass, is to avoid taking life unecessarily.

And here is the problem with your argument, this art form takes lives
necessarily. So the question is, if we are better off without a few ant
colonies or without an entire art form.

~~~
goldenkey
Perhaps one day killing will be seen as "getting one's hands dirty" and
unecessarily organic in an otherwise square, cold, sterile, sharply edged
world. Killing will not stop for morals but rather for reasons of seperation.
Meals will be perfectly produced homogenous mixtures of 3d printed amino
acids, vitamins, and sacchatides. Yeah.. I dont have much faith in the ability
for people to trade pleasures for lives.

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aembleton
Here's a video of the process:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xvsxarw-J0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xvsxarw-J0)

------
social_quotient
Not an endorsement but this is cool. 10 tons of concrete
[http://youtu.be/lFg21x2sj-M](http://youtu.be/lFg21x2sj-M)

~~~
DrScump
I saw that on PBS, probably a "Nature" or "Nova" episode.

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nawariata
The result is cool, but screw people doing that.

~~~
twelve40
did 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#Counterm...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant#Countermeasures)

~~~
goldenkey
Still 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
How about if you kill them without producing an art piece in the process,
because they're a pest? Is that also immoral?

~~~
goldenkey
I 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.

~~~
tsmarsh
Oh, you must be an alien. My species, humanity, has been displaying the
corpses of criminals for the entirity of its existence and continues to create
paintings, songs and movies about it. The question is more "Is it art, or is
it porn?", followed by " Is porn art?". Find me a catholic church which
doesn't have a cast crucifix. That the ants were in the 'mold' feels like an
implementation detail. They were scheduled for death. Weather the aluminium
was poured before or after the extermination feels like an implementation
detail. But do I want one? Fuck, no. It was interesting for science, but once
was enough.

~~~
goldenkey
"Hey, look at those ants on that blue planet. Are you ready to fire the Death
Star?" "Armed and ready, planet has gone molten. Awesome, get the contracts
ready, I got dibs on the cast of the NYC subway, I heard that those ants
really loved those tunnels, man, it's gonna look awesome in my gazeebo."

~~~
jononor
"They were an invasive species anyway, always scheming to extend beyond their
own planet."

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anc84
Link-bait title. The destination is web shop, not a proper answer.

~~~
rincebrain
Since 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.

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DrScump
If E.O. Wilson ever finds this artist, he can expect a beatdown with a cane.

