Unwhorl is an interface for snails created by Mari Bastashevski and Sam Lavigne. The app converts any touch screen into an interactive plane for gastropods to play, paint, and share music and sketches in real time. The transmissions occur between a rout of snails based in NYC, Berlin, Lausanne, and Rotterdam.
Unwhorl is an experiment in platform ethology. One, we claim, can aspire to be both a purely speculative gesture towards the future of
With Unwhorl we aim to consider how existing interspecies technologies may be freed from the singular purpose of the translation of animal subjectivity to humans, instead seeking for a more encompassing exploration of the intuitive connections all species share through the act of creating experimental fictions.
Fictioning, we posit, creates enduring bonds between individuals, spaces, and temporalities. Humans have fictioned into existence entire worlds, yet it is still difficult for us to presume that other species, too, rely on fiction to make sense of their experiences and to form cultural communities. Interspecies bonds, we speculate, may depend on shared fictions.
This work is part of a larger series of TRANSMEMETIC exchanges between human animals and machines. It was made possible thanks to the advice, attention, and affective investments from Daniel Maszkowicz, Clemens Driessen, Lindsay Eyink, Anthony Volodkin, Øyvind Brandtsegg, Mattia Pretolani, Salif Sissoko. For all inquiries contact Mari or Sam directly.
