Week 4

This week I have exploring the natural behaviours of bees and how there interactions with each other can not only shape my work but it can shape the format in which the exhibition is created. I have been particularly interested in how the honey bee workers perform a series of movements, often referred to as the "waggle dance," to teach other workers the location of food sources more than 150 meters from the hive. Scout bees fly from the colony in search of pollen and nectar. If successful in finding good supplies of food, the scouts return to the hive and "dances" on the honeycomb.

This has lead me to think about creating a social movement called the “Scouts” and promoting the project using people posting and sharing there own images of bees with the hash tag #Beescout which I could link to my own work, so not only raising awareness of the social and environmental issues surrounding my work but actually raising the profile of my own work. Using the public in this way will not only create interest in my work but the issues I am passionate about.

I have looked at how the dance is performed I have found that the honey bee first walks straight ahead, vigorously shaking its abdomen and producing a buzzing sound with the beat of its wings. The distance and speed of this movement communicates the distance of the foraging site to the others. I once again found this interesting I could direct the audience with sounds. For example the closer they get to the images the louder the bee noises could be showing that they have found what they were being directed to find.

I have found the communicating direction becomes more complex, as the dancing bee aligns her body in the direction of the food, relative to the sun. The entire dance pattern is a figure eight, with the bee repeating the straight portion of the movement each time it circles to the centre again. This could even lead my work to be used in conjunction with interpretative dance, the exhibition could be surrounded by performance this would capture the imagination and attention of the audience for a longer time allowing them to explore the images and all the information surrounding them in a more detailed and less confined way. Allowing the whole project to become a movement not just a static exhibition.

I will be looking at how I can allow the public to interact with the images and performances in such a way they could not only show other people what they have seen but they can inform and project the idea of conservation on people who haven’t seen the pieces hopefully grabbing their attention and bringing them to explore the work.

I have looked at two variations of the waggle dance the round dance, a series of narrow circular movements, alerts colony members to the presence of food within 50 meters of the hive. This dance only communicates the direction of the supply, not the distance and the sickle dance, a crescent-shaped pattern of moves, alerts workers to food supplies within 50-150 meters from the hive this information could be used when thinking about the position of my images from the hives when the project is finalised in an outdoor exhibition. The 150m radiuses could be an interesting way to display the work; it gives a structure and form the exhibition, but also adds more context. Further exploring the idea of the bee’s natural habitat/movements and behaviour shaping and changing the project. I could create the exhibition in a circle formation once again to further the context in the context I am researching visual example of this can be found below.