While looking through Saraceno's work, I found that he drew inspiration from Spiderwebs to create his suspended Ecospheres and web-like installations. I decided to do some research on spider silk and discovered that when compared pound for pound, spider silk can be as strong as steel, possibly even stronger. The picture on the left demonstrates the strength of spiderwebs as it is able to hold many drops of water without breaking.
There are scientists at MIT who have been doing research into spider silk and
found that it employs a unique crystal structure that can convert an otherwise weak material into one with super strength. This discovery could allow development for stronger synthetic materials in the future.
I also found that since spiders act extremely territorial, scientists have had a hard time farming them for their spider silk because they would end up killing each other. However, researchers from the University of Wyoming have managed to put the spiders’ silk gene into goats in such a way that the goats would only make the protein in their milk. Apart from the goats receiving this new gene, no other side effects seem apparent compared to goats without the gene. In the future, the scientists plan to put the gene into alfalfa plants which can apparently produce even larger quantities of silk. By being able to produce large quantities of spider silk in such a mannor, it gives scientists a stable supply of spider silk to experiment with and to develop into other materials.
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