tactical magic

For works of art which Hans Haacke referred to as “Real-Time Systems,” he stressed that the materials, energy used, and their functioning as a system of interrelated elements, should exist independent of the interpretations the viewer or an audience would bring to them.

The Cricket- Activated Defense System (CADS), created by The Center for Tactical Magic, embraces this concept. The CADS project is an object that functions based on an invented technological system tied physically and conceptually to an environmental system.

The project was designed in response to illegal logging activity in the Redwood Forests of California. Using technology scavenged from military- industrial complexes, bioengineering that recombines consumer surveillance products with model rockets, a cricket- missile system was created to fight logging of endangered environments.

The object itself is a device that translates the sound of a significant number of the cricket population’s chirps to a firing signal for anti-logger missiles. This piece relies on the cricket’s unique audible responses to human encroachment and their subsequent transmission of a very precise frequency should they feel threatened, as well as their strategic positioning along the borders of logged and un-logged regions. CADS establishes a system of deterrence through the technological augmentation of natural systems.


The use of nature as a system, and as a site for artwork, is a practice Haacke explored with pieces such as Chickens Hatching (1969), and Grass Grows (1969). The use of living natural materials, such as plants and animals, led to a concentration not on the living things themselves, but on the growth process and growth’s role within a system, either constructed by the artist or found.



The CADS project utilizes a system found in nature, the defense mechanism crickets have developed, for the creation of a man-made system which creates a chain reaction of events, which promote discussion of such topics as the polemics of “violence,” along with notions of creative resistance and interdisciplinary social practices between various disciplines such as art, engineering, biology, environmental science, etc. This piece functions in many different realms, all of which can be tied together by The Center for Tactical Magic’s intention of evoking thought and implementing change.