The installation shows the start and end point of an “induced emigration” of a colony of Temothorax (aka house-hunting) ants filmed in real time. It is a re-staging of a laboratory experiment simulating a natural disaster, in which an ant’s nest is destroyed by removing the roof, forcing the colony to search out and move into a new home. Such experiments are used to study collective decision-making processes and have inspired optimization algorithms.

In preparation for the experiment, each of the tiny ants (1-1.5 mm in size) is marked with acrylic paint allowing them to be viewed and tracked individually. Each video show an ant home made of two glass microscope slides sandwiching a layer of perspex with an oval form cut out of it.

One video shows the ants moving out of their home; the other shows them moving into the new one. The ants take great care that each of them makes it safely into the new home.