Monday 28 September 2015

Spiders, space and tensegrity

Can Spiders spin a web in space?

NASA ran a competition for school children to suggest experiments that could be done in space, and this question won.
So NASA sent a spider and lots of flies up in the space shuttle.
At first the spider created very messy webs but just as Robert the Bruce noticed the spider tried, tried and tried again, and eventually created working webs in weightless conditions- isn’t that amazing.

I discovered this incredible fact at the Smithsonian air and space museum in Washington DC. I had taken a few days holiday after attending the 1st Biotensegrity Summit and 4th International Fascia Research Congress and on my last day decided to avoid the center of town and stay close to the airport and this ‘overflow’ museum in Dulles hit the spot. I was totally blown away by the scale of the building and the exhibits, which included a space shuttle! In one of the exhibit cases was this story about the spider.




Why am I telling you this?
Because the concept of tensegrity explains how the spider could build a web in space.

It’s appropriate that I was in Washington because tensegrity sculpture is celebrated at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn museum. Also, it was in Washington that Dr. Stephen Levin put the concept of tensegrity and living architecture together and invented the area of science called Biotensegrity. Dr. Stephen Levin was honoured at the 1st Biotensegrity summit and spoke about his ‘eureka’ moment. 

What is tensegrity?  Buckminster Fuller created the word tensegrity out of two words tension + integrity, inspired by the sculptures of Kenneth Snelson. 
In Stephen Levin’s own words (2009)

” Tensegrity structures are omni-directional, independent of gravity, load distributing and energy efficient,hierarchical and self-generating. They are also ubiquitous in nature, once you know what to look for.”

A Snelson tensegrity model, The Needle, stands in the gardens surrounding the Hirshhorn museum, it is elegant and light in construction. The compressive elements float in the air, supported by the tensional elements. It satisfies both the eye and the intellect, I can see why Stephen Levin was so fascinated by the structure; you cannot tire of its simplicity.



Dr. Levin was looking for a reason why along with dinosaur footprints we do not find tail marks. The tails of dinosaurs are very long and the absence of tail marks means that they must have been held clear of the floor at all times. From his musings the concept of biotensegrity was born.  The concept explains why geese can fly with their necks stretched out long in front of them. –and a spider can spin a web in space????

In the earths gravitational field life uses ground force. Ground force opposes the gravitational downward force to provide tone tension and stability. Our bodies, along with every other living structures, continually negotiates these two forces using the biotensegrtiy concept, but what happens when ground force and gravity is taken away? When man first went into space one of the ways the body reacted to weightlessness was to lose some of the compressive structure, in particular the bones, and astronauts returned with varying degrees of osteoporosis. Subsequent space missions introduced weighted exercises to counter this side effect of weightlessness.
So how did the spider spin a web without ground force and gravity? Well at first it didn’t, the spider had to work it out.  A true tensegrity model is self supporting, it can be picked up, turned, compressed and still return to or maintain it’s shape. I doubt the web could be called a true example of biotensegrity because it needed to be attached to something, however the spider can. On a micro level (cell) and macro level ( whole organism) the biotensegrity concept explains how space is surrounded and stops the cell....Organism from collapsing in on it ‘self. In a body it creates space for organs and liquids. It explains how Fascia (connective tissue) can both connect and separate and provide sliding layers, protecting delicate structures like blood vessels during movement. This was beautifully demonstrated by Dr. Jean-Claud Guimberteau. At the congress he screened a 2 hour video revealing what fascia looks like in a living body, his beautiful pictures are a masterpiece of patience and skill and show just what the ancient anatomists missed because they did not have the technology to look inside a living body. Now we have the technology we cannot ignore what we have found.
As movement teachers we can use this new understanding of structure and anatomy. Understanding biotensegrity and the fascial system is now within easy grasp. Biotensegrity explains how we can hold yoga poses such as Warrior 3, the same biotensegrity model explains how we can use Pilates machines to achieve seemingly effortless movements which are difficult to do on a mat. The idea that this bodywide force transmission system, which is adaptable and continually changing to accommodate changes in load and movement, uses the concept of biotensegrity is liberating and exciting. Like the butterfly effect ( a small movement in one place can escalate into a large movement elsewhere) moving one part of the body effects the whole structure. From this we can show that dysfunction in one area can be caused by a restriction elsewhere.
Biotensegrity is a model that all teachers of movement should learn and understand, because knowing the model makes creative teaching possible.
Like Selson’s needle we can all be gracefully self- supporting, like the spider we can all persevere with our practice and discover our own internal web and we too can 
     
BE AMAZING.





Tracey Mellor © 2015

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