How to Make a Moth
The Gabrielle Moth is one of many, many moths dreamed up by @mothgenerator
If you have a light outside your front door — even a dim, flickery light — you probably already have moths in your life. Maybe you’ve got a cabbage moth out there, or a tiger moth. But do you have a “meat is gross”moth? Or a “the world has ended and all that’s left is this”moth?
Katie Rose Pipkin (artist, poet, moth lover) and Loren Schmidt (artist, game maker, moth lover) are in the process of creating a new world of moths: skinny moths, shimmery moths, ominous moths, friendly moths, moths that look vaguely familiar and moths like nothing you’ve ever seen. Their moth generator churns out moths by the dozens — and it lets you make your own, too.
I got curious about the (brace yourselves) method to their mothness (sorry), so I corralled them both into a Google Hangout and peppered them with questions. Our conversation is below, lightly edited and illustrated with many, many moths.
Sideshow: So, well, simple question first: why a moth generator?
Katie Rose: Gosh. So, we’re working together on a larger interactive project, and we are assembling it mostly out of smaller component building blocks. The moths originally were supposed to live there — a tiny patchwork piece of that fabric. We found ourselves falling fairly far into the texture of the moth generator, though — what was originally to be a night or few nights of work turned into a month of anatomical research, wing pattern generation, etc.
Loren: I’ve always been strongly drawn toward insects. They are so different from us, so varied and sculptural compared to us vertebrates. Moths are a more recent interest. I think it’s their texture that initially drew me to them; the slight transparency of the wings. They are so like paper.
Sideshow: So, you’re a fan of old scientific illustrations of moths? Any in particular?
Katie Rose: Well, [Ernst] Haeckeldid moths, which are always a delight.
Loren: Yes, Haeckel did this one illustration of plume moths which I adore! My favorite set of illustrations I found while doing research for this project is a book by Arthur Gardiner Butler, F.L.S. &c. called Lepidoptera exotica.
Sideshow: So what was down the research hole? What did you learn about moths?
Loren: It turns out that their wing color comes from pigment, like mammal fur color does, but it also comes from the microscopic structure of the scales. The individual scales are shaped in ways that interfere with the light.The structures are on the same scale as the wavelength of light itself, and they cancel some frequencies and interfere with others! It’s amazing.
Katie Rose: Loren, didn’t you have some amazing image of fossilized scales on a prehistoric proto-moth?
Sideshow: That is such an incredible texture. Lettuce-like. Or, um, savoy cabbage.
Katie Rose: Yeah!
Loren: Yes! Savoy cabbage. So they found this fossilized moth, and were able, by looking at the structure of the scales using an electron microscope, to tell what color it was when it was alive.
Sideshow: What color was it?
Loren: Neon green, apparently!
Sideshow: That’s bonkers.
Katie Rose: Okay, rules we ended up developing for the moth generator: rather than developing rule sets that emulated actual moths, we ended up developing rule sets that more emulated illustrations of moths. The entire program is written with that type of mentality — it operates stroke by stroke, mostly laying down tiny marks rather than broad-strokes patterns or fills.
Sideshow: Like working with a colored pencil, sort of?
Katie Rose: A very determined colored pencil. (We counted once, and each moth has something like 50,000-100,000 strokes.)
Katie Rose: The moths are also full of impossible combinations; a lepidopterist would probably have a lot to say about this type of wing patterning over that color, or a body shape that small in relation to the legs…
Sideshow: I wondered! So not all of these could be real moths, then.
Loren: Right. Actually we have a fantasy of finding a real ornery entomologist who will pick it all to parts and lecture us on the impropriety of taking such liberties…
Katie Rose: But we were interested in getting a feel for the idea of a moth, or a drawing of a moth, or something that a different ecological history might have produced if given the same set of variables.
Sideshow: So what qualities give something the feel of a moth?
Katie Rose: From a distance, they feel incredibly soft; furry, dusty, barely-there; but when one looks at pictures or examines a real moth closely, it is all bounded by incredible internal structure and symmetry, some of it quite harsh and mathematically defined. I think of lot of this has been keeping the right balance between those two extremes.
Katie Rose: We do have Twitter mentions working now, so one can generate a moth based on any phrase or character set!
Sideshow: So explain this a bit: I tweet “give me a green moth” at the moth generator. At that moment, what happens?
Katie Rose: So! It takes each word in the phrase, and tries to parse it with alpha-numeric base 36 argument, basically converts each number/letter into an integer (1 = 1, obviously, while a = 11). And then each little component function is run according to that value — so “give” might go to the antennae, “green” to the legs. And you end up with a moth that is unique to “give me a green moth” even though it may not be literally green. You can see this running here.
Loren: It often feels like there’s a correlation between the names and the moths! It really feels spooky sometimes.
Sideshow: Can you tell me a little about the larger project you guys are working on?
Katie Rose: This is the second iteration of a generative piece about cities and places (the first one is online here and it generates on refresh). The new one is less about a singular place (and less text-based, although that is there too) and more about wandering through a generative landscape of interaction. The component parts ideally make a patchwork texture that becomes both large and whole.
Sideshow: Are the moths the first inhabitants?
Loren: There are a few other components which inhabit that landscape too.
Katie Rose: Let’s see…we have finished several clocks (including one based on Jupiter), a generative map, considerable views from windows, a bell tower that translates text to carillonsong, an illustrator that makes watercolor paintings out of sentences run through Google Maps’ API…
Sideshow: This sounds amazing! A wonderland. What will the final format be? A website, a site-specific installation? Or is it all still just brewing?
Loren: There will definitely be a website. There may also be other formats as well.
Sideshow: Last question, to each of you: favorite moth you’ve generated so far?
Katie Rose: The “Small Pearl Poultry Spangle” was quite a name.
Sideshow: Wow, yes.
Loren:
Sideshow: That is such a modest little moth.
Loren: I liked that one a lot. I have some showier favorites too, but sometimes the well-formed plain ones are lovely.
Postscript: After talking to Loren and Katie Rose, I decided that Studio 360 needed its own moth. So I tweeted @mothgenerator, and I got this little guy. It’s not the most spectacular moth in the world, but hey, it’s ours.
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