The Transparent Beehive is a living sculpture in the form of an observation beehive made from plexiglass, wood, aluminium and steel. Inside was a living bee colony that had access to the outside world through a plexiglass pipe. The beehive is internally structured like a book. Each wooden frame is enhanced with microphones which pick up the vibrations and sounds of the hive and which monitor continuously the colony’s buzz. Cameras inside the hive monitor the growth of the wax structures and the activity of bees. Additional sensors measure temperature, humidity and other microclimate measures. Data is treated by sensory processing, pattern recognition and AI algorithms and visualized using sophisticated computer graphics algorithms in order to make the state of the colony tangible.
Credits: AnneMarie Maes – artist and beekeeper, artistic concept and images (photographs, videos,data-processing and visualisations); Balthazar de Tonnac – informatics; Vincent Malstaf – audio engineering; Billy Bultheel – sound processing.