Scaffolded Sound Beehive
AnneMarie Maes
2020
The Scaffolded Sound Beehive is an immersive installation which allows you to experience the sound of a beehive. The installation consists of a 2.5 meters tall Warré beehive, in which you can put your head. Here you can listen to an auditory interpretation of the activity in a hive, based on field recordings recorded on the roof of the Brussels Urban Bee Lab. The 15-minute recording spans the spectrum of a single day, from midnight to midnight. The increase and decrease in swarm activity in the hive became the guideline for processing the recordings. The audio work tries to embody the bee swarm while simultaneously intersecting the swarm with swirling electronic sound clusters.
The work of AnneMarie Maes (BE) is situated on the verge between art and science. She studies the interactions and co-evolutions within urban ecosystems, with a strong interest in DIY technology and biotechnology. She works with different biological, digital and traditional media, including living organisms. Her artistic research translates into techno-organic objects, inspired by factual and/or fictional stories. On the roof of her studio in Brussels, AnneMarie Maes built the Urban Bee Lab: an open-air laboratory and testing ground where she studies the processes that nature uses to create forms. Both The Bee agency and The Laboratory for Form and Matter are fertile ground for various installations, sculptures, photographic works, objects and books. With The Bee Agency Project, AnneMarie Maes wants to give back the autonomy to the honeybee and support colonies to live ‘in the wild’ again.