Playful. Human. Died.
Her Choice: Playful Human Died | Discovered (2024) is a collaborative installation created with physicist and artist Sarah Rogoz, exhibited as part of the Impure Strata series for the Künstlerische Tatsachen Art & Science Residency Project in TRAFO Jena.
The work draws on our shared research into ant colonies and reflects on the porous boundaries between scientists, their study systems, and the societies they inhabit.
Anchored in themes fundamental to social insects—interaction, group living, and division of labour—the installation unfolds in three interconnected components. Together, they question the interchangeability and entanglement of researcher and model organism, blurring scientific observation with lived experience.
Behind an office desk rests a deflated, deconstructed clonal raider ant (Ooceraea biroi), our study system. In front of it, a looping video overlays colour-tagged ant colonies with mirrored movements of scientists, forming a shifting assemblage of human bodies that imitate, exaggerate, and dissolve into the insects they study. Within a circular arena scaled from 45 mm to 6 mm, complex patterns emerge from interactions. Food searching, recruitment, and alarming can be found in the flickering sequences of experiments and performances. Suspended above, a sculptural visualisation of a social network reveals its hidden substructures, translating behavioural data into a spatial form that bridges biology, computation, and aesthetics.
The installation is a fun tribute to the curiosity, confusion, pain, and fascination evoked by the creatures that Zimai and Sarah love.
Acknowledgement
Kathrin Hunze
Enrique Torres
Yul Koh
Vincent Maurer
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology
also inspired by Sasha Waltz & Guests' dance performance InC and workshop given by Margaux Marielle-Tréhoüart