ON THE ORIGINS OF ART I AND II

The Maratus spiders of Australia are the most colourful, flamboyant, sexy, and charming spiders on the planet. I think if paradise existed, it would be inhabited by beautiful creatures such as these. Their use of colour, gesture, sound and movement makes them (in my opinion) amongst the most sophisticated visual and performing artists in the world. They are also the smallest performers I know of—on average about 4-6mm in size, smaller than a grain of rice.

The video series On the Origins of Art shows their incredible courtship ritual. The male has to try extremely hard (both in visual communication as well as in charm and perseverance) to be ‘chosen’ by her. She exercises her right to choose, and drives him to display an excess of vibrant colour and performance virtuosity in a complex courtship ritual.

This process is known as ‘sexual selection’ and was first observed by Darwin in the display of peacock birds’ courtship. As is well known, these birds utilise beauty, pattern, colour, gesture and sound in order to attract a mate and hence reproduce their species.

Just like peacock birds and humans, the Maratus are highly visual animals. And like us, they are aware of their looks and the impact this has on the other’s reactions. They are deliberate in their use of gesture, form, colour, and pattern.

Their eyes are very important, so much so that they have eight of them. You can see them gazing at each other and making micro-gestures with their pedipalps and third legs. They use eye contact to communicate with each other, as well as sensing vibrations that travel through the ground. We had to record these sounds with a special ‘laser vibrometer’ for the video On the Origins of Art, as the tapping sounds they make are not audible to the human ear.

The thing that struck me about these spiders is how minuscule they are—and yet they’re also very sophisticated. That’s why I joke “You don’t need a big brain to be an artist”.

To make people more aware of their diminutive proportions, I place a life-size image of the spider on the border of the Actual Size print series. These are microscopic deep focus photographs of their abdomens which we can appreciate as abstract paintings that reveal the magnificent detail of their structures and diverse patterns. They ‘paint’ with pigment and structural colour (the colour produced by the refraction of light). Viewers can also appreciate the different shapes of their scales thanks to the magnification of the image 195,000 times its actual size.

But be careful of where you step, as you could be crushing one of these minuscule and talented artists. There are more than 85 different species within the Maratus genus, and they have a great diversity of pattern and coloration. I will continue to photograph them one season at a time—the Australian Spring is the ideal window of opportunity to find and photograph these beautiful creatures. In 2020, we focused on Maratus spiders from the region of West Australia.

To create these images, we have used highly-sophisticated microscopic technology to produce large-megapixel, deep-focus images. Each is made from a composite of up to 1000 images. In many cases, two separate stacks were used and merged with Photoshop. The camera moves fractions of a micron at a time, taking photos with overlapping focus from top to bottom of the specimen. Then specialised focus-stacking software combines all the sharp pixels. Because the automatic algorithm is confused by overlapping focussed structures, careful sub-stacking and hand editing is necessary. Depth of field is a problem that microscopy and macrophotography always have, and this is a way to solve that problem.

All the digital microscopy was done in collaboration with the renowned scientific imager Geoff Thompson and entomologist Andy Wang, who is an artist in microscopic specimen preparation. We used a Visionary Digital System owned by the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, Australia to make these spectacular images.

Maria Fernanda Cardoso
Dec 2020
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"He is about 4 mm big, she is 6mm. He is colourful and outlandish, she is not. He tries really hard to get her, she watches him. Hard to please females have driven the Maratus males to such extremes that they are the probably the first ever performance artists: they dance and choreography, drum and sing, all at the same time as they wave their colourful tails ".

Maria Fernanda Cardoso

ON THE ORIGINS OF ART I - II

" Maria Fernanda Cardoso explores the art forms of the animal world through the mating rituals of a tiny Australian spider. Her subjects are Maratus, the highly visual eight-eyed jumping spider know by the common name ‘peacock spider’. Like peacocks and birds of paradise, the male Maratus has developed a complex system of courtship display that exhibits its prowess as a dancer, musician and visual artist. Cardoso has recorded their ostentatious mating ritual using HD macro cinematography and a laser vibrometer, capturing their conspicuously colourful dance and the distinctive beat they make with their vibrating abdomens. Unlike a nature documentary’s depiction of species in their natural habitats, Cardoso films the spiders’ rituals against a stark white backdrop, emphasising the aesthetic beauty and the choreographic nature of their courtship.

Projected onto two screens on opposing walls, the male Maratus is seen waving its legs to get the female’s attention. They strut and sway to their own accompaniment – a percussive beat that is amplified as a hyper-real sound with a tactile dimension. The climax of the Maratus’ performance is the unfolding of an abdominal flap that fans out in an iridescent array of colours, like a peacock tail, which you can see more clearly in the two prints that accompany the video. If impressed by the male’s artistry, the female will allow him to approach her. In presenting an art form of performance and display that is not created by, or for, humans, Cardoso argues that humans are not alone in their production and appreciation of the arts. The performing spiders that make these artworks are the product of an evolutionary process of sexual selection that has refined and enhanced their sensory apparatus, creating a discerning aesthetic sense controlled by the females, in which each performance’s aim is to perpetuate life over to the next generation ".

MCA Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. “On the Origin of Art I and II.” Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/works/2018.13/ (18/7/2019).