Ant Farm
Ant Farm was an avant-garde architecture, graphic arts, and environmental design practice, founded in San Francisco in 1968 by Chip Lord and Doug Michels. The group dissolved in 1978.
Ant Farm collaborated with The Residents and The Cryptic Corporation a number of times during the 1970s, most notably featuring Hardy Fox, Homer Flynn and Graeme Whifler in their 1975 performance "Media Burn", and supplying architectural designs for Cryptic's failed Ugly Grey Theater in 1977.
History
Ant Farm's work often made use of popular icons in the United States, as a strategy to redefine the way those were conceived within the country's imagination.
Ant Farm associated with The Residents in the earliest part of their career[1], encouraging them to promote the release of their debut album Meet The Residents in 1974 with a flexidisc sampler given away for free in File Magazine.
In 1975, members of The Cryptic Corporation, Homer Flynn and Hardy Fox partook in Ant Farm's live event "Media Burn", in which the two acted as security guards for a John F. Kennedy lookalike. A photo of Flynn from this event was used in promotional materials for The Residents' limited edition spoken word release "The Healer and the Archer" in 2019.
Ant Farm also assisted The Cryptic Corporation with the design of their abandoned Ugly Grey Theater in 1977.
Ant Farm disbanded in 1978 when a fire destroyed their studio. Lord became a teacher and retired in 2010, while Michels designed the unbuilt 555-foot statue The Spirit of Houston for Houston, Texas, and died in 2003 in an unfortunate accident near Sydney, Australia.
See also
