BeeSpace: Audio Observation

Listen to audio

BeeSpace: Audio Observation is an installation, housing live honeybees inside an observation hive that extract the sounds from the bees triggered by the viewer presence. Recognizing that bees need 3/8 of an inch of free space to be productive for human desires, honey, BeeSpace: Audio Observation adapts architectural design principles from the modern beehive to explore what we will accept or not accept through the tolerance of space. Consideration of this tolerance and exchange system is activated through the interactive audio component that extracts the live bee sounds as their protest. Based on time and position the volume increases until you no longer feel the bees are isolated in the beehive but may have escaped into the room. Bringing into question, how we control a population, human or otherwise to get what we want.

Reverend Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, an amateur beekeeper, invented the standard modern beehive in 1852. He discovered that bees would tolerate, 3/8 of an inch, where they would not build comb or cement, this is known as “bee space.” The bee’s natural system is displayed in BeeSpace within a built environment to consider the threat of modern living practices to both bees and humans. Creating an opportunity to reconsider our relationship not as separate but a part of the natural system.

Video presentation>>

Practical research at BeeVillage: Battery Park>>