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Bees exhibition colony room

Bees: a story of survival – using art & science to convey a vital message

Immersive exhibition will open at Liverpool’s World Museum in October 2023 before touring the world

Fiona Philpott Liverpool Museums
Fiona Philpott

Bees: a story of survival is an immersive new exhibition currently in development from National Museums Liverpool (NML), in collaboration with artist and sculptor Wolfgang Buttress. It will take visitors on a journey into the lives of these remarkable creatures, exploring their relationship both with humans and with the natural world around us.

Featuring state-of-the-art technology, the exhibition will combine the artistic vision of Buttress with the knowledge of the team at National Museums Liverpool, drawing on its extensive entomology collections.

Blooloop spoke to Fiona Philpott, director of exhibitions at NML and Wolfgang Buttress, to find out more about the process of creating such a unique exhibition, as well as the mission behind it.

New exhibition – Bees: a story of survival

Bees: a story of survival will use innovative technology and dramatic exhibition design to take audiences on an interactive journey. Visitors will discover the perfect anatomy of bees, their incredible diversity, and their importance to our planet. The show also explores the decline in bee populations and the potential solutions for their future survival.

Speaking about what visitors can expect, Philpott says:

“The backdrop for the exhibition will be a sculptural framework that takes inspiration from the structures bees create within their nests and hives. It’s developed from algorithms. The framework will also feature plant-based and recycled materials. The structure will be a modular grid, creating a series of corridors, connected to an organic floor which will act as the conduit for the integrated technology.”

https://youtu.be/qiLxsGGYiGo

“High-definition images of bees from our collections will allow visitors to see, in minute detail, their amazing diversity. Visitors will learn how bees have evolved and why they are such great pollinators.

“Sound and light projections, orchestrated by the bees themselves, through vibration sensors within their colonies, will remind us of the beauty that bees bring to the natural world. Meanwhile, an anechoic chamber, which removes sound, will help us imagine a dystopian future, a world without bees.

“We will also learn more about the threats bees are facing. We will explore what this means for the survival of our planet and what we can do to help them. The show will remind us that the time for action is now.”

Why an exhibition on bees?

NML has one of the most important and comprehensive collections of bees in the UK, and the exhibition is based upon and inspired by this. It also draws upon the expertise of the curatorial team, working closely with leading research scientists and experts in their field.

It also builds on the work of Dr Martin Bencsik from Nottingham Trent University. Bencsik has pioneered the use of accelerometers as a way of monitoring and decoding the activity of bees, passing on vital communication about their health. The exhibition will have a connection with living colonies as it travels the world. The plan is to capture data that can then inform further research on bees.

Liverpool museums Entomology

“For several years, we had been thinking about how we might use our entomology collections to talk about biodiversity and the environment,” says Philpott.

Then, the team became aware of the awe-inspiring HIVE in the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. This was the UK’s gold medal-winning pavilion at the Milan Expo in 2015.

“It was a celebration of the natural environment and a wonderful fusion of art and science, enjoyed by thousands of visitors. The more we investigated Wolfgang’s work, which includes BEAM, the experience that he developed for the Greenpeace Field at Glastonbury Festival in 2019, the more we felt his approach and his passion for the environment could help us achieve an incredibly powerful and compelling visitor attraction at our museum.

“We reached out to Wolfgang and so began an exciting creative partnership.”

Introducing Wolfgang Buttress

Wolfgang Buttress
Wolfgang Buttress

Wolfgang Buttress is an award-winning artist based in Nottingham, UK. He has been creating multi-sensory artworks that draw inspiration and reflect upon our ever-changing relationship with the natural world for over 30 years.

“I explore and interpret scientific discoveries to create human-centred experiences,” he says. “My work alludes to histories, traces and memories which are both personal and contextual. Exploring themes of the natural and sublime, the artworks seek expression through light, sound, and form. We seamlessly integrate structural analysis into the form of the artwork. This creates a deep and harmonious relationship between function, meaning and aesthetics.

“I have been aware of the existential challenges facing bees and pollinators for several years now. I had the opportunity to design the UK Pavilion for the World Expo in Milan in 2015.

“The theme of the EXPO was feeding the planet. So, I chose to highlight the plight of the honeybee and its essential role in pollinating 30% of our food. I wanted to make a real-time emotional connection between the bee and human through art, landscape, architecture, science and sound.”

Creating The Hive

hive-kew
Photo credit Mark Hadden

To achieve this, Buttress led a multi-disciplinary team to create an immersive sculptural experience. Working with Dr Bencsik, the team installed vibration sensors to measure the activity of a real bee colony in Nottingham.

This fed live signals to 1000 LED luminaires, lining the interior of a sculpture called The Hive. Algorithms then converted these vibrational signals into lighting effects. This allowed the Hive to convey a visual real-time representation of the state of the colony. A unique soundscape also accompanied the visual experience. This was based upon pre-recorded bee sounds and harmonious stems crafted by an esteemed ensemble of musicians.

“The live energy of the bees triggered the musical stems. It became a symphony between bee and human.”

In June 2016 the sculpture moved to the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, as a permanent feature.

BEAM at Glastonbury Festival

Speaking about the sculptural pavilion he created for Glastonbury, BEAM, Buttress explains:

“BEAM is a 30m diameter woodland dome pavilion. Visitors enter through numerous pathways lined by rising tree trunks inter-planted with wildflowers leading to a wide hexagonal clearing. 3.5m high wooden lenticular screens surround the internal space, to create a fully immersive experience.

“The installation used accelerometers to measure the activity of the Cornish Black Bee colony living at Worthy Farm. These live signals then travelled through to the sculpture. Here, algorithms converted the vibrational signals into ever-changing lighting and sound effects 24 hours a day.”

BEAM at Glastonbury by Wolfgang Buttress
BEAM at Glastonbury Festival

The Pavilion has a legacy post-Glastonbury as a giant bee hotel. Visitors during the festival could use hand drills to create holes in the trunks. This helped to entice solitary bees and other insects to make BEAM their new home.

National Museums Liverpool approached Buttress in the Summer of 2019, to ask if he would like to work with them on a new touring exhibition.

“They had seen The Hive and BEAM and were keen to express the importance of these incredible pollinators by doing something very different with an exhibition. They were keen to utilise new technology to tell the dramatic story of two intrinsically interlinked societies and the evolution and ultimate survival of bees.”

Bees exhibition brings together art and science

To engage visitors with the exhibition’s key message, NML and Buttress chose to use a fusion of art and science.

Instead of examining tiny insects in display cabinets or reading lots of information on graphic panels, visitors will be immersed in a multi-sensory environment. Imagery, sound, vibration, scent and light will stimulate their senses. Guests will be drawn into the secret world of bees, allowing them to see these tiny creatures as never before. As a result, they will develop a greater sense of wonderment, empathy, and responsibility for nature and the future of our planet.

Bees a story of survival

The message is an important one, says Philpott:

“We are facing a profound environmental crisis and a massive decline in bee populations around the world. This is because of habitat loss, pollution, parasites, and pesticides amongst other things.

“A world without bees would look incredibly different. It would change our lives profoundly because bees are the world’s most important pollinators. So, what we want to achieve with this exhibition is to reconnect visitors of all ages with nature. We want to open their eyes to the wonderment of bees and encourage empathy for these amazing creatures.

“We hope that through this exhibition, we will all become more conscious about the world around us. To survive, we must live in harmony with nature.”

Communicating a vital message

“NML and I developed the brief together,” adds Buttress. “Bees are exquisitely tuned to the environment, they can be seen as sentinels or like canaries in the mine. They are facing unprecedented existential challenges caused by us. I wanted to express a sense of wonder and show how amazing these pollinators are, and how they interact with each other. I wanted to express the essential role that they play in the environment.”

Meadow bees exhibition liverpool museums

“The audience will be guided on a journey through a series of curated spaces and experiences. These will both inform and emote. By the end of the exhibition, I want people to fall in love with these exquisite insects. The idea is that if you love something you’re less like to kill it.

“The exhibition is important. It scientifically, artistically, emotionally and pragmatically shows what bees are and the steps we need to take to both save the bees and in turn ourselves. The exhibition acts as an alarm call. By 2121 we may be facing the mass extinction of all insects. The decline in bee populations reflects the climate emergency and a reminder that the time for action is now.”

The technology behind Bees: a story of survival

The video and audio experiences, including visual mapping and zoned multi-channel soundscapes, will be authored live by a connected bee colony’s behaviour. Each exhibition venue will also have an associated ‘Hive Monitor’. This custom-designed mobile unit contains a range of integrated sensing, producing live data for the exhibition audio and video processing systems.

“We have the ‘A-team’ of world experts in projection mapping, lighting design and sound, who are the team we have used on previous successful projects,” says Buttress. “The exhibition uses ultra-lean, distributed IP networked technology for media serving and active loudspeaker systems which provide multi-channel space panning to move sound around the listeners.”

There are many exciting, unprecedented interactive technology applications integrated within the experience, not to show off the technology but create an unexpected sense of surprising magic.

“The technology of the actual environmental build framework is unique. It has been crafted specifically to achieve the exhibition’s sustainability goals and fast build times. The system uses only a few simple, light, and strong components. These can be used in a huge range of combinations, like a giant but easy puzzle. This mimics how bees efficiently fill volumes with their honeycomb.

“We have also designed a reaction-diffusion algorithm. This will map the layout of each venue’s volume for optimized fill while maintaining all necessary parameters of circulation, experience and content accommodation.”

Not technology for technology’s sake

Despite all this, technology does not take centre stage, says Philpott:

“We hope that visitors will be so drawn in by the atmospheric sound and light environments that they will be unaware of the technology supporting the exhibition.

“The technology should enhance the experience of visitors. It opens their eyes to the beauty of nature around them and evokes an emotional response. Imagine being immersed in a vibrant multi-layered sea of projected flowers where you are completely overwhelmed by the colourful images and sounds around you.”

honey-bee

“We want to open people’s hearts and minds to the world around them, to help them feel differently. To give them an emotional experience that is beyond words. Think how amazing it would be to find yourself at the centre of a bee colony where the bees themselves orchestrate the images, sounds and vibrations around you, changing in real-time, connecting us with nature in a way we could never have imagined possible.

“Key features of the exhibition include high-resolution holographic images of our extensive bee collection, an interactive entomology wall, a projected wildflower meadow where visitors are immersed into the natural habitats of bees, the word of bees where visitors can explore, see, hear and feel the world like a bee, an all-encompassing, scaled soundscape where visitors are placed at the centre of a bee colony and an arresting anechoic chamber where visitors are plunged into a discomforting acoustic vacuum where the positive impact of bees disappears before our eyes through interactive projections.”

Bees exhibition has sustainability at its core

Given the exhibition’s message, it also needs to be, in itself, as sustainable as possible.

“It is important that the medium is also the message,” says Buttress. “The exhibition talks about the importance of bees. But it is also part of a larger conversation about how to sustain and protect the environment.

“The vision from the outset is to create an installation which is as light as possible. We can transport the whole exhibition internationally using three shipping containers. The physical exhibition is modular and can be fast packed and reused. We are using LED lighting and robust sustainable materials.”

Holographic display bees exhibition

“We want the exhibition to be as environmentally friendly and sustainable as possible by design,” adds Philpott. “So, we are working with specialist manufacturers to develop an innovative new eco-friendly set of build solutions.

“The main structures will be built from recyclable materials and the technical elements will also utilise low power, energy-efficient, lightweight, easily maintainable equipment. Using lightweight materials for the main structure of the exhibition, it will be faster to build and easier to transport.”

The exhibition is a turnkey solution that will minimise the impact on host venues. It also comes with a raised floor to house the technical infrastructure as efficiently as possible.

“We hope that the exhibition will tour for at least five years,” says Philpott. “Once the experience is over, we also plan to reuse and recycle key elements of the show.”

Bees: a story of survival to tour different venues

Bees: a story of survival will launch at the World Museum in Liverpool in October 2023. It will then tour other venues. In terms of potential future hosts, Philpott says:

“The beauty of this exhibition is that it can work on so many different levels. It is at its core, a work of art and a thing of beauty. As such, it would not be out of place as an art installation in a gallery environment. It is also an exhibition underpinned by science, with a strong message about the survival of bees and the future of our planet. This means that the exhibition would also fit beautifully in a natural history museum, science centre or an encyclopaedic museum.”

“It is aimed at a wide intergenerational audience, designed to capture the imagination and excite the curiosity of both young people and adults.

“There will also be accessible, enhanced experiences for disabled visitors. We have developed nationwide education and community outreach activities for the show. We are happy to make these available to host venues as a source of inspiration for their programmes.”

NML is already in conversation with several museums and is currently inviting enquiries from potential host venues. Interested parties can contact Andrew Bullock, head of touring exhibitions for National Museums Liverpool by email.

A transformational experience

As Bees: a story of survival is developing, NML is continuing to evaluate its approach and test the ideas behind the exhibition.

“So far, we have had an overwhelmingly positive response from this visitor research. It’s very encouraging,” says Philpott. “We are all becoming increasingly aware that we have arrived at a crucial moment in our planet’s history. Like never before, the future of the planet is in our hands.

“Bees have survived for millions of years but are facing a massive decline. They are a beautiful symbol of nature and the dangers we face if we don’t start to take greater responsibility.”

In conclusion, Buttress says:

“The visitor can expect to be transported and possibly even transformed. Art can be both very subtle and powerful. It can remind us of who we are and who we would like to be. Art also allows us to feel and see the world in a new way. It can inform without preaching.

“Art can connect us to history, the present, the future, ourselves, each other and the world around us.”

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charlotte coates

Charlotte Coates

Charlotte Coates is blooloop's editor. She is from Brighton, UK and previously worked as a librarian. She has a strong interest in arts, culture and information and graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in English Literature. Charlotte can usually be found either with her head in a book or planning her next travel adventure.

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