Ant Farm

A living ant farm behind glass for the TC002. The ants dig real tunnels and chambers, a little more every day. They carry each grain of sand up to a hill by the entrance, raise their brood and fetch the food you drop. Turn the knob to zoom from the whole farm into the busy places, down to every grain of sand and every leg of an ant.

Three farms:

• Harvester ants in earth: humus with roots, loam, sand and gravel with stones.
• Garden ants in colored sand, like the classic farms of the seventies.
• Leafcutters in blue gel, lit from below, with a fungus garden.

The colony:

• Nest plan: The diggers work through a plan of their own: a main shaft in straight pieces, galleries to alternating sides, and chambers for the queen, the brood, the food and the dead.
• Workers: Foragers form an ant road to the food you drop, nurses carry the eggs, and undertakers carry away the dead.
• Brood: Eggs become larvae, pupae and new workers.
• Hidden: The colonies live on while the clock shows other apps, and after a restart up to 7 days are made up.

Up close:

• Zoom levels: 1×, 2×, 4× and 8×. Up close you see an ant walking with its legs, digging head down, climbing the walls of a shaft or carrying its grain, and the queen breathing beside her eggs.
• Finds: Things lie hidden in the earth: an ammonite, an old bone, a marble, a bottle cap.
• Tour: Left alone, the app tours the farm by itself: the whole farm, into a busy place, closer, on to another, and out again.

Above the earth:

• Sky: It follows the real time of day, with the moon in its real phase at night.
• Seasons: flowers in spring, fireflies on summer nights, falling leaves in autumn, snow in winter.
• Events: rain with thunder, a nuptial flight on summer afternoons, a worm, and a ladybird or beetle passing by.

Sound: It plays only while the app is shown.

• Around the farm: wind and birds by day, crickets at night, rain, winter wind, and the hush under the earth when you zoom in close.
• Effects: Digging, food landing, hatching ants and wings are played on the clock's synthesizer, louder the closer you are.
• Music: an optional calm piece for each farm.

Knob:

• Turn right: zoom in.
• Turn left: zoom out.
• Press: up close, go to the next busy place. From afar, drop food.
• Hold: follow one ant.

SELECT:

• Once: how the colony is doing.
• Twice: the next farm, which melts in like the screen wipe in Doom.

Settings:

• Speed: real, fast or demo. A farm is dug through in about 11 days, 2 days or a few minutes.
• Which farms to show.
• Winter rest.
• Seasons by date or always summer.
• Darker at night.
• Tour or overview.
• Sound: off, effects, or with ambience.
• Music.
• Start a farm over.
• English or German.