mellifera » process

new postcard from the metaverse

andrew — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 04:37:32 +0000

i have been busy installing and testing an opensim install (as both a research project in its own right, and a backup plan for terra.mellifera if second life goes down during a gallery install) and working on programming for the arduino based second life autonomous agent and client, based on libOpenMetaverse . At the same time terra.mellifera has been going through its life cycle and picking up a bit of interest amoungst virtual photographers.

here is a new postcard from the metaverse:

terra.mellifera update

andrew — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:28:54 +0000

terra.mellifera has undergone a major terraform and most of the flora has found a balance within the system. the flora is vital to the existence of the mellifera themselves as it will provide them with several key items that they rely upon to continue their own processes. the new entry slurl is: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caerleon%20Isle/242/239/27

The Piezo frame on day 27

Trish — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:21:00 +0000

Yesterday Julie had decided to add another storey to our bees’ accommodation and so when i arrived today to check the Piezo i was amazed to find this big loop of bees around the entry to the hive. At first it looked as if the bees were climbing all over each other to get back into the hive after being disturbed but, as i watched, i saw that bees flying up with full pollen sacks made their way straight into the hive through this crowd at the entry without any trouble or hesitation at all ???

I took some sound recordings then Julie came & lifted out the frame with the Piezo in it. Now the bees have built comb all over the Piezo but they are leaving the wire uncovered.

When the frame was replaced i took another recording. The really exciting news is that Andrew- with his more sophisticated sound capture software – has been able to isolate the bee sounds from my previous recordings (snail-mailed to him on a CD). So this means that we are actually succeeding in recording vibrations using this Piezo embedded in the wax after all

13th November – just a footnote to this post: it seems that the bees elected NOT to move into the new storey added to this hive but instead, soon after the photo of the loop at the hive entrance was taken, they decided to swarm instead. Their behaviour at the hive entrance was a preliminary to this.

terra-mellifera

andrew — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:57:32 +0000

Thanks to the generosity of the ‘caerleon isle’ artist community our project now has a new home in the metaverse. Here is the SLURL :http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caerleon%20Isle/154/153/22

Caerleon isle has been my home in SL for some time now, and has developed and evolved (along with its sister sim – new caerleon) into a vibrant place of exchange, education, project development and exhibition.

day 17 another Piezo check…

Trish — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:12:35 +0000

Before meeting Julie at the ‘bee house’ i took another sound recording from the Piezo. It’s not turning out as we had hoped but more of that in a minute…

Julie once more helped me by opening up the hive & lifting out the frame with the Piezo inserted in it.

As you can see the bees have built up the wax over the Piezo, but not so much over the wire. They’ve even formed some quite regular comb containing some honey.

Going back to the earlier point about sound capture in the hive & calling upon some other research we’ve been doing it looks like we’ll have to try another approach taking into account the ways in which vibrations are best transmitted throough honeycomb – in art & in science experiments are just that: EXPERIMENTS!!!

first postcards from the metaverse

andrew — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 05:28:57 +0000

nonnatus korhonen and nuerone schism, andrew and trish’s avatars have been meeting regularily in second life, putting some time into developing a self sustaining eco-system for the mellifera to exist within. images below show the self regulating, self replicating mellis florae, and a developing Arcadian environment that will become central to the project.

day 8 – checking the piezo in the frame

Trish — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:05:19 +0000

Today I met Julie and we opened up the hive. After the usual preliminary smoking proceedure she lifted out the frame where the piezo frame was embedded in the wax. Things have certainly changed since the last time she looked &

told me that the bees were avoiding the piezo area!! Lots of honey making happening too, these bees are really getting down to business…

As you can see they’re now building on top of the connecting wire & the peizo itself and starting to create the typical honeycomb shapes. By the way honeycomb is this light colour when it’s first produced before the bees start walking over it with pollen-covered feet…

Just for comparison here’s an older frame from the same hive!

I took some more sound recordings but it seems like this experiment is not turning out the way we had hoped – maybe vibrations just don’t travel through the wax – luckily we can carry on and see how things go if/when the bees do build all over the piezo.

Piezo mic in the hive

Trish — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:29:16 +0000

On Monday 13th October, with the help of researcher Julie Lim, the frame with the Piezo Mic embedded in the wax was inserted into a hive.

After smoking the hive to calm the bees Julie took out the first frame full of honey

Then we put the new Piezo frame at the front.

Finally Julie closed up the hive again leaving the Piezo wire outside so that i can go up to the “bee house” and attach the H2 mic to make recordings over time & see what sound changes we can pick up…

inside the hive

andrew — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:12:48 +0000

another trip to the bee house, this time we inserted a mic right into the hive and captured some fantastic audio of local and general bee activity. we worked with researcher Carla Evangelista in installing out mics and in discussion our observations and poetic readings of the bees activities. (pictured below: in the first image, Trish and Andrew at the bee house entrance, and in the second and third image Andrew with Carla installing the mic in the observation hive)

plans: we have taken away a half worked frame of comb to embed a piezo into, in the hope it will be a more long term insertion into a hive and capture vibrations through and into the comb itself.

into the bee house

andrew — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 07:39:20 +0000

with the intention of observation and audio recording we headed for the bee house. after some trouble finding a piezo transducer (whatever happened to musical christmas cards!) we set off with our trusty (and well soldered) contact mic and H2 zoom.. intrigued by the concept of communication across the hive through vibration (stamping little feet and controlled wing beating through legs and into the comb) we attempted to gather some audio through fixing the contact mic on various parts of the observation hive.. the glass walls were a disappointing start, but we soon found some nice recording where the bees were ?licking? the air through a closed (and perforated) access port. then i suited up and Trish grabbed the camera and we got in close with the mic at the entry to the hive. the mass of bees gathering at the entrance could be manipulated like a viscous liquid and through the mic made some amazing sounds (vibrations).