The above photograph, a still-frame from the Melliferopolis video “Hive Five” (embedded at the bottom of the page), shows the external microphones and the wiring for internal microphones that the human musicians interact with.
A man listens through headphones to the activity inside of a Hexa-Hive, a hive designed as a part of the Melliferopolis project to facilitate inter-species encounters and at the same time challenge the paradigm of conventional beekeeping. (source)
By placing microphones inside of beehives, this multi-species musical project allows human sound artists and musicians to interact creatively with honeybees as they tend their comb and fly in and out of the hive to forage. Led by sound artist Till Boverman of Melliferopolis and in collaboration with Aalta University (of Finland), Helsinki-based sound artists bring their own electronic instruments and creative practices to public parks where the microphone-equipped beehives are set up in preparation for the concert. The bee-and-human music is then projected through speakers for all to hear. Artists isolate and manipulate the buzzing and fanning of wings, the clicking, trickling sounds of nectar processing, the waxy crackling of new bees emerging from comb, and the conversational droning of bees dancing out foraging maps of the local landscape, creating a rhythmic and entrancing ambient musical experience. This is a part of Melliferopolis’ larger vision of amplifying (literally and figuratively) “shared spaces for Human-Insect cultures” and facilitating constructive encounters between humans and insects.
The international group of (human) sound artists participating in this project are Till Boverman, Katharina Hauke, Erich Berger, Markus Koistinen, Chi-Hsia Lai, Simon Lysander Overstall, Julian Parker and Veli-Matti Ivävalko. (source)
