The sculpture is magnificent, but look at the head of the insect that is used to showcase the kissing sculpture. It is much more intricate and beautiful, and unlike the crude and blurred image we get in even the best optical instruments, see how the scanning electron microscope reveals the ant as a meticulously crafted little gem, an intricate little machine, perfectly molded, assembled, shaped in symmetrical, heartbreaking, horrible alien beauty. It is its own little universe of textures and electroneural phenomena, pheremone chemistry and mechanical articulation.

And when the creature was alive, we know that tiny body was made up of multiple levels of complexity, at the organ, tissue, cellular and molecular levels, all the way to the quantum bedrock of reality. The thing was alive, it moved, ate, sensed its surroundings, and changed them, both by its own actions and by complex behavioral and cultural interactions with its sisters, was a member of a complex community of thousands of individuals of various castes that existed as a biological unit, not only in ecological relation to its surroundings, but also as a link in an evolutionary chain that goes back to the beginning of DNA on this planet.

Its overwhelming. The sculpture is beautiful, as beautiful as the lovely young model that posed for it. But that ant, probably only a millimeter in length, is also beautiful, in its own terrible inhuman way.

I don’t mean to belittle the artist, or the technology that went into this, but the ant, one of nature’s humblest creatures, gives us a hint of a deeper beauty and complexity. The artist, the science, the model, all are biological creations too, a product of the human brain and human culture, now involved also in the same act of creation. We are gods, perhaps childish gods, or gods-in-training, but we are now well on our way to making our own ant. Even this first step is pretty impressive.

The sculptures are astonishing, but I just had a glimpse into the abyss.