Tomás Saraceno (San Miguel de Tucumán, 1973) is an Argentine contemporary artist whose projects, consisting of floating sculptures, international collaborations, and interactive installations, propose and dialogue with forms of inhabiting and sensing the environment that have been suppressed in the Capitalocene era.

[3] Saraceno is also known for his interest in spiders and their webs, which led to the formation of the interdisciplinary community Arachnophilia, a research-driven initiative that refines concepts and ideas related to spider/webs across different forms of knowledge and multiple artistic, scientific and theoretical disciplines.

[4] Notably, Saraceno collaborated with researchers at the Photogrammetric Institute of TU Darmstadt to develop the Spider/Web Scan,[5] a novel, tomographic technique that allowed, for the first time ever, precise 3D models to be made of complex spider webs.

Through Arachnophilia, Saraceno engages international audiences to develop more profound understandings of the role spiders play within our cosmic web of life, through initiatives such as Mapping Against Extinction as presented in the project's Arachnomancy App.

[16] Aerosolar sculptures were officially presented during the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP21, at Grand Palais, Paris, 2015, after that a similar prototype has been tested in November at the White Sands Dunes of New Mexico.

[17] On November 8, 2015, it broke world records by achieving the longest and most sustainable certified flight (without fossil-fuel, solar panel, helium or batteries) ever registered: During approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes, seven people were lifted up in White Sands' desert landscape.

[22] Aerosolar sculptures were officially presented during the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP21, at Grand Palais, Paris, 2015, shortly after the world first prototype (the D-0 AEC) test in the White Sands Dunes of New Mexico.

On November 8, 2015, the D-0 AEC made its maiden voyage as the most sustainable flight, without fossil-fuel, solar panel, helium or batteries: During approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes, seven people were lifted up in White Sands' desert landscape only through the heat of the sun.

[23] Beginning in 2012 and based on a concept and long-term research by artist Tomás Saraceno, the Aerocene App is based on the Float Predictor, an online digital tool developed by the Aerocene Foundation and Studio Tomás Saraceno in collaboration with Lodovica Illari, Glenn Flierl, and Bill McKenna from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), together with Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) with further support from Imperial College London, Radioamateur, and the UK High Altitude Society.

The Aerocene App developed by Tomas Saraceno consists of a global forecasting system using open meteorological data to predict flight paths of aerosolar sculptures circling around the globe without CO2 emissions.

Building on the innovations arising from Saraceno's collaborative research into spider/web architectures, materials, modes of vibrational signaling and behaviour, the broad aim of Arachnophilia is to increase visibility and change people's perceptions of spiders and webs within the context of the current ecological crisis.

Orchestrating a contemplative ambience, visitors move semi-visibly between the sculptures, pausing to reflect on the wall texts which articulate the exhibition’s overarching theme: the need for collaboration and cohabitation of humans and nonhumans alike within the entangled Capitalocene era in which we find ourselves.

As the gallery voices in their description, “blurring the boundaries between inside and outside, Webs of At-tent(s)ion is an invitation to attune ourselves to collaboratively imagined futures, grounded in principles of collective care and hope as practiced and maintained by certain communities all over the world, and to the radical interconnectedness of all beings with whom we share this “damaged planet,” both living and nonliving.”.

Akin to Webs of At-tent(s)-ion (2018), the darkness seeks to create a space that, without steering towards somberness, allows for tender reflection in which viewers can meditate on deeper philosophical questions around ecology and the climate emergency.

The exhibition also features Sounding the Air (2020) and How to entangle the universe in a spider/web, before viewers gravitate towards the faint lighting surrounding and reflected from Saraceno's large silver spheres which make up A Thermodynamic imaginary (2020).

Bodies and sculptures merge with the other entities in the room, be they human or non-human, organic or constructed.”[42] Continuing with the exhibition’s photic transition, light takes center stage in Free the Air: How to hear the universe in a spider/web (2022).

Spanning 39 meters in diameter, a huge sculpture of mesh netting expands throughout the gallery space, a structure onto which visitors are invited to explore in order to experience the concert in which shakers emit the representation of usually inaudible frequencies created by spiders’ vibrations.

[43] The final work presented in Particular Matter(s) is Museo Aero Solar (2007), a gigantic balloon constructed from crowd sourced plastic bags,[44] which stands as a stark juxtaposition of vibrant color when viewed in relation to the darkness of the exhibition's initial rooms.

As Daniel Creahan notes, “through the act of playing, visitors shape a constantly evolving collaborative musical composition through touching the strings of the web, producing vibrations that echo spiderly modes of communication.

Featuring artworks, workshops, concerts and public symposiums, the atmosphere of On Air threads together a multi-faceted web of relations which are felt without necessarily being verbalized, aiming to move us from an Anthropocene to a post-fossil Aerocene society.

As Elda Oreto notes, when played by multiple participants, the structures “produce frequencies similar to those of micro and macroscopic scientific phenomena: from reproducing the signal of courtship of spiders to the melodies of the electrons of galactic nebula.” [53] In an interview with Ignant, Saraceno notes that Algo-r(h)i(y)thms is “an exercise in establishing a communication with something that is distant, inaudible, but which we are a part of… a non-verbal dialogue, a jamming session.”[54] Also featured is Sounding the Air, an aeolian instrument constructed from threads of spider silk which are triggered by the wind and resonate in the air.

Directly influenced by the visitors’ movements, conversations and breathing, along with other multi-elemental forces, the work's sonic architectures are constantly in flux, being continuously re-written via the innumerous presences inhabiting the gallery space.

Recorded at the salt flats in Uyuni, Bolivia, the video invites us to reconsider our linear notion of time through examining the way airborne matter is influenced by our movements, and how these particles navigate through space directly in relation to our alternating velocities.

As writer and editor Ann Souter notes, “by making global warming both visible and audible, Saraceno highlights our reciprocal relationship with the elements and suggests alternative ways of responding to our predicament.

The exhibition Cloud Cities, presented at Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart in Berlin (2011–12), consisted of a collection of geometric, inflated shapes that challenge the notions of place, space, future and gravity.

As curator and art historian Moritz Wesseler notes, "an aspect that is of great importance to Saraceno in this context is that the city's shape and size can be changed continually, subjecting conventional ideas about boundaries and territories to critical scrutiny.

The installation is a device that calls perceptual certainties into question; it is an element that modifies the architecture containing it, a structure that makes the interrelationships among people and visible space, an attempt to overcome the laws of gravity.

Inspired by Solar Bell, Saraceno developed the idea of entire cities built upon lighter-than-air structures and sustainable energy technologies, lifted by the wind and suspended above the surface of the Earth.

Saraceno imagines spaces of dwellings as new urban skyscapes: flying buildings elevated by wind power alone, which erase the boundaries defined by geopolitics, and start to respond to local specificities.

Organized by the SFMOMA Architecture and Design department, the exhibition comprises an immersive, site-specific cloudscape installation of suspended tension structures and floating sculptures, as well as explorations of the intricate constructions of spider webs.