Andrew Norman Wilson: Mosquito Computer is organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and curated by Steven L. Bridges, Associate Curator. Support for this exhibition is provided by the Alan and Rebecca Ross endowed exhibitions fund.
About the Exhibition
For this iteration of Andrew Norman Wilson’s Mosquito Computer, the museum architecture created by Zaha Hadid becomes the work’s chassis. Earlier exhibitions of the work were contained within a customized computer case. The architecture and the computer then become one and the same, and even this wall text transforms into a README file. Inside the “computer” are two hard drive enclosures, one filled with a pond for larvae to grow, the other with tree resin that serves as both a food supply and a preservation medium for dead mosquitoes. An excerpt of the film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) is projected within the space as visual stimulus for the mosquitoes, also acknowledging the museum’s role as a set in the film. Over the course of the exhibition, the female mosquitoes are fed blood meals sourced from the artist’s veins to afford them the protein they need to make their eggs. These blood meals also allow the artist to store his genetic information temporarily in the mosquitoes’ bodies, and then permanently in the tree resin once it becomes amber. As the artist points out, “according to the narrative of Jurassic Park (1993), this could allow for clones to be produced in the future.”
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