Held at London Zoo from September 3-6, 2009, the Pestival showcased the Termite Pavilion outside the Royal Festival Hall in London. Pestival is a mobile arts festival examining insect-human interactivity in bioscience, through paradigms of contemporary art, cinema, music and comedy as well as direct scientific demonstration and educational projects.
An art and science collaboration between Softroom Architects, Freeform Engineering, Atelier One, Chris Watson, Haberdasherylondon, KLH and Pestival, the Termite Pavilion represents a six cubic meter section of a termite mound, scaled up 15 times. The pavilion contains sound recordings from inside a termite mound and lighting that dims and brightens to represent breathing.
The piece is in part based on the pioneering work of Dr Rupert Soar and the ‘Termes’ project, a team of international experts based in Namibia who have created the first ever 3D scans of termite mounds. Their findings have been embraced by entomologists and architects alike, and have featured in Sir David Attenborough’s ‘Life in the Undergrowth’ series.
For the Termite Pavilion, a team of architects and engineers selected a central section a termite mound scan, and scaled it up to a size which would allow humans to move through it. The structure arrived in kit form, and was put together on site. It was made of cross laminated timber, sourced from Austrain spruce, for reasons of sustainability, durability and cost.
Aiming to initiate a cultural shift in the way people think, moving them toward a more integrated way of looking at the natural world, Pestival brings together eminent international artists and scientists and local and global communities to collaborate on cutting-edge interdisciplinary art projects, placing the natural world under the microscope in order to further public understanding of our place within the biosphere.
