How To: Turn a dead frog into a webserver [How To]

That is absolutely not a typo. Dead frog plus some spare electronics, wires and cables plus some servos and whatnot and a whole shitload of mineral oil equals one incredibly awesome webserver with kick. Oh, did I forget to mention? It’s not just a dead frog webserver, it’s the reanimated corpse of a frog - webserver.

This electrical experiment / art project is the work of Garnet Hertz and is a traveling installation exhibit called Experiments in Galvanism that was on display in the US and Europe in 2005 and 2007.

“Garnet Hertz has implanted a miniature webserver in the body of a frog specimen, which is suspended in a clear glass container of mineral oil, an inert liquid that does not conduct electricity. The frog is viewable on the Internet, and on the computer monitor across the room, through a webcam placed on the wall of the gallery. Through an Ethernet cable connected to the embedded webserver, remote viewers can trigger movement in either the right or left leg of the frog, thereby updating Luigi Galvani’s original 1786 experiment causing the legs of a dead frog to twitch simply by touching muscles and nerves with metal.

Experiments in Galvanism is both a reference to the origins of electricity, one of the earliest new media, and, through Galvani’s discovery that bioelectric forces exist within living tissue, a nod to what many theorists and practitioners consider to be the new new media: bio(tech) art. ”

But the big question is how do you make one at home? And could it become a more robust web server than just powering a connection to a single terminal? Possibly, but a frog is pretty small so unless you want to use something like a dead dog, you’d have to find the right miniaturized components.

The crux of Hertz’ artwork is not that it’s just a dead frog stuffed to the gill with electronics, but that users at a computer on the other side of the room, connected to the suspended frog by an ethernet cable are able to control the left and right legs of the frog.

For more detail than I could possibly be bothered to get into here plus a nifty Quicktime movie and more pics, check out the whole thing here.  And with your knitted dissected frog, you’ve got a theme party on your hands.  Pass the dip.