Ant Farm

The free speech movement and the antiwar demonstrations in San Francisco heavily influenced the group Ant Farm. In 1967, the group partook in the Summer of Love in San Francisco. They embraced the youth cultures' communal living, sexual freedom, hallucinogenic drugs, and utopian ideals. In addition, they adapted the do-it-yourself ethos of the Whole Earth Catalog in their work.

The Bay Area became the center of new art forms, such as performance and video. Ant Farm gravitated to these new forms and began incorporated it into their work. Like many other avant-garde artists, the group was determined to build outside of the conventional architecture. In the early years of their collaboration, Ant Farm sought out to create an alternative architecture suited to a nomadic lifestyle. The architects Buckminster Fuller, Paolo Soleri, and utopian Archigram inspired their early works of the giant inflatable structures.