SEE THE MANTS...
Follow the tunnels or choose your own way – hide and seek, find and lose, work and play, colonize! The Mant Farm is your childhood Uncle Milton ant farm: with period signage;
scaffolding, barriers, and ladders; nets with vivid tunnels cut out for observations; spaces to form and explore community; and an observation platform over 30 feet high! An homage to Earth’s first metropolis, the Mant Farm provides the playa with a dramatic, immersive, interactive vertical maze where you can explore the concepts of maturation, citizenship, nostalgia, scale, and systems of communities – in a working ant farm built to human scale.
EXTRA SPECIAL...
The new GIANT Mant Farm, a big 40’ high by 60’ wide enclosure which includes a “MANT FARM SAFETY HANDBOOK” and a “Guarantee” for a generous supply of live Mants.
WHAT IS A“MANT FARM”?
At its heart, Mant Farm is a working vivarium – a “place of life” – that serves both as an interactive community playground and a laboratory in the desert to observe and study critical ideas in community. How does scale affect community? Observe the Mants carrying up to one-third of their body weight and consider the scale of the object to its environment – of a person to the installation, of the installation to the playa and to Black Rock City.
FASCINATING!
A living TV screen. The Mants put on a quiet but exciting show that will keep you fascinated for hours.
EDUCATIONAL!
An education in nature study as well as work and patience.
WORLD'S SMARTEST
CREATURES!
Study the intelligent Mants as they build bridges, dig subways, move mountains – and consider the ideas of
NOW!
OUR VERY OWN
citizenship. Does the Mant Farm require government to be organized? Do its participants become citizens? Which systems guide them? Do they need laws, customs, and civic systems? Watch them mature from individuals into families, and into communities, federations, even a commonwealth.
WARNING: MANTS CAN ESCAPE FROM FARM ENCLOSURE!
