This project fits within the larger objective of creating sustainable beehives, a goal which has been pursued by the artist during the past decade. She has already built a series of ‘Intelligent Guerilla Beehives’, sometimes in the form of speculative designs but often also physically realized and inoculated with live bee colonies. The sustainable beehive is intended as a safe haven for honey bees and a monitoring station to track the health and behaviour of the colony.
The present project focuses on making the hive self-sufficient in terms of the electric energy that powers the sensors and built-in electronics, using a radically innovative power source in the form of photosynthetic bacteria. The bacteria have to form a biofilm that is sustained by an underlying growth medium thriving on an exoskeleton.
The project pursues radical innovation by using an integrated organic approach based on biophysics and molecular biology and by exploiting the possibilities for 3d printing and digital fabrication offered by fab labs. The project is at the same time a source for stunning artworks, showing the beehives themselves, 3d models and sketches, results of the environmental monitoring, close up views of the fascinating world of bacterial photosynthesis, a.o.
