Cirque de Squirrel is a project of Lucia Jacobs and the Berkeley Cognitive Biology lab, a multi-disciplinary group of psychologists and bioengineers who study animal champions — lizards walking on water, squirrels leaping through trees to stash a whole winter’s worth of nuts in just a few weeks (and without other squirrels finding their buried treasure). The lab studies these champions to dig out the foundations of thought and movement in animals and to find out how such behaviors work and evolve.
At Stochastic Labs, Jacobs et al took their ideas from science to create a kind of living artwork to propel their research forward. The result? A kinetic sculpture/ puzzle box for wild squirrels. In Cirque de Squirrel, a magnetic climbing wall becomes an innovative platform to measure squirrel decisions and movement. Says Jacobs, “We saw this idea explode from the drawing board in the special alchemy of Stochastic Labs; by setting out to build art from science we found ourselves building science from art. We’re still working on our sculpture and our work in the heady atmosphere of Stochastic has already been a game changer for our science.”
