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HeK: eco-visionaries

Overall installation is BEE AGENCY
[Agency is the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment]

For the HeK presentation/eco-visionaires, the Bee Agency constellation is made of:

Glossa

(2017, Scanning Electron Micrograph x150 magnified) 165cm x 215cm
, B/W archival print on photo rag paper 305gr)

Glossa is the Greek word for ‘tongue’. The glossa is similar to a long segmented cylinder covered with hairs. When the bees are foraging, the tongue is extended and immersed into the nectar. The hairs on the glossa erect to collect the liquid and the nectar is sucked into throat of the bee. Besides being a feeding instrument, the bee-tongue serves also for licking the queens’ pheromones which regulate the life in the hive. So it is also a kind of communication instrument.

Variation Games

(2018, long and short edit - I still have to decide which one for HeK) - video, B/W + color, sound Presented in sculpture named ‘peephole’ (33x33x33 + metal pedestal 110cm)

The video is a condensed edit of a year-long audiovisual observation of the behaviour of a honeybee colony in the private environment of their refuge. The recordings are made with an infrared camera and contact microphones inside the beehive. The content of this video focuses on the first 6 weeks of the observation, when the bees start the building of their nest. The images show how they first scan the empty space and detect all foreign objects, which they propolize and eventually tear down, thus appropriating their territory. They start organizing their activities to design the locus as their home. The images demonstrate and reveal decision-making, networking, collaboration and collective intelligence. The soundtrack is based upon recordings made in the beehive. This video throws the viewer out of his comfort-bee-zone, and shows the colony in action from an unusual point of view.

Intelligent Beehive

(2017, IB sculpture in glass box + electronics + black sand) - glassbox 33x33x33, solar panel + electronics, camera and plexi pipe; metal pedestal 33x33x110cm

The Intelligent Guerilla Beehive is a research project on the edge of art and science. It evokes issues of sustainability and biodiversity, giving viewers an artistic experience of my ongoing research related to the disappearance of the honeybee.
The goal of the Intelligent Beehive is a double one. At one hand it offers a safe refuge for city honeybees, and at the other hand is is a biosensor that interacts with the environment and that measures the pollution of the foraging fields around the beehive.
The project is a collaboration with the non-human other. Honeybees and bacteria become interfaces to be informed about the health status of our environment. Bees and bacteria become living monitoring technology.
The bees act as transmitters in an interconnected web of bio-intelligent agents. They construct a bioremedial beehive and create a symbiotic environment for exchange with specific bacteria. They are sentient, perceptive; they see, feel, navigate and communicate. They fabricate and dance, they collect and build, they perform and reproduce. The result of this collaboration is a biotechnological device: the Intelligent Beehive.

Laboratory for Form and Matter

(2016-ongoing, laboratory light table, 200x100x60 tbc) metal, plexiglass, light, color filters; glass jars and petri dishes, research samples with bacteria and other micro-organisms in order to create new smart materials)

The Laboratory for Form and Matter is a research project into the creation of smart materials by and in collaboration with non-human organisms. It is situated at the intersection of biology, ecology, technology and contemporary culture. The research is fed by my interest in bacteria as a medium for artistic expression and by a certain fascination for natural structures, networks and organic processes at microscopic level.

  • metal frame for Lab Table to be made by HeK (L250cm x W65cm x H90cm)
  • 2 x plexiglass 250×65 (opal and transparent) or glass for top
  • TL light under and above the table
  • Thomas from Novartis
  • send empty jars with transport, take skins in handluggage
  • stich indigo skin to meausure, idem bioplastic
  • lab jars different models in glass for wet skins ===== plexi samples dry skin+bacteria


hek.1531040154.txt.gz · Last modified: 2018/07/08 08:55 by ami