+ PROJECT

Quiet Storm: Music for Insects

PROTIBERIA x Samuel Van Ransbeeck

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SUMMARY

With Quiet Storm: Music for Insects, we want to use sound to enhance the mating process of the Tenebrio molitor beetle. We want to study how the beetles react to sound stimuli and if it improves their reproduction rate. For the farmers, we want to use sound to monitor the insects so that they do not have to rely on visual display only. These two avenues of research will give us valuable insights to optimize the farm and achieve a higher yield.

Using insects for agriculture will improve sustainability and bring new ways of economic development to rural areas. At the same time, with Quiet Storm, we want to consider the beetles as sensitive beings.

Especially the part of making the beetles mate is experimental, and we’ll find out if it works when we do the experiment but that is the whole point of such art-science residencies, and the unknown makes it exciting.

By creating an (interactive) installation we want to bring the world of the Tenebrio molitor (and insects in general) closer to the human world. We hope to bridge the gap between insect farmers and the public and to get people interested in how working with insects improves sustainability.

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“Nature listens in ways we are only beginning to understand. Let’s tune in the future of sustainability.” Samuel Van Ransbeeck’s proposal integrates sonification and soundscape composition. His strong background on agriculture projects will support Protiberia’s challenge on improving reproduction and mating process of Tenebrio molitor. This collaboration born thanks to Hungry Ecocities consists in making music for and from this sustainable healthy reared insect. This way, we will implement sound as a way to improve the yielding of the mealworm and connect people to insect rearing in a pleasant way.”

Victoria Giráldez Sánchez – R&D researcher PROTIBERIA

+ ARTIST

Samuel Van Ransbeeck

Belgium

Samuel van Ransbeeck is a sound artist and researcher. His main interests are sonification, soundscape composition, and digital humanities. His work is interdisciplinary and collaborative, always looking for new ways of expression. He has worked at several universities and research institutions around the world, like the University of Manchester, The Getúlio Vargas Foundation, INESC, and more. He has been the recipient of several large grants for art and research projects, such as the Mediafutures.eu programme to develop Mumidis in collaboration with uTrigg, a Brazilian government grant for talented researchers, and his PhD grant from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. Recently, he completed FarmSonics, an EU-funded S+T+ARTS project to sonify agricultural data.”

+ SME

PROTIBERIA

Insect farming

Albacete, SPAIN

Logiqs is an expert in mobile growing systems. These are systems where the production of plants is done on benches that move between one, or more growing Protiberia is a biotechnology company that transforms organic vegetable waste into ingredients for the agri-food sector using insects, applying cutting-edge technology and innovative production processes.​

The HungryEcoCities project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement 101069990.