The Buzzing Machine - Multiple Exhibitions
- Submitting institution
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York St John University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 524
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- University of Wales Trinity St David
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of first exhibition
- November
- Year of first exhibition
- 2017
- URL
-
http://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/5015/
- Supplementary information
-
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ‘Cross -Pollination: Revaluing Pollinators through Arts and Science Collaboration’ is an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded (£45k) ‘Networking’ project that aims to bring Art and Science researchers together to produce creative art projects that explore and promote the crisis facing insect pollinators (particularly bees). The project invited 15 specialist scientists from the field and 15 practicing artists in order to create informed arts/science collaborations. Jeff led a small team of arts researchers (Dr Laura Jenkins, Dan Butler) that drew on Paul Klee’s image of the Twittering Machine (1922), as a metaphor of impending environmental disaster. The concept was to build a 3D version of the machine in the Klee work and use it as a device that could educate, entertain and allow people to contemplate the impending insect pollinator crisis in the world and its impact.
The Buzzing Machine is a simple wooden box with a hand crank handle on one side that when turned causes small wire bees attached to the box to bounce around as if swarming. Inside, the handle triggers a motion sensor that in turn activates a small computer and speaker, playing a series of industrial buzzing sounds varying from a lawnmower to a B52 bomber, and a vacuum cleaner, making the machine into a memory box for a future where the natural buzz of the bee is heard no more, but recollected through industrial noises. A remembrance of things past; the machine was painted International Klein Blue in an attempt to access the conceptual artist Yves Klein’s ‘void’, a parallel world where the bees may have been banished. In terms of dissemination, the performance of our ‘buzzing machine’ would be accompanied by a lecture given by Coston and myself. The project culminated in a public education day at Dr Beynon’s Bug Farm in Wales.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -