Bee Monitoring. The raw material is an 8 TerraBytes stream of images. During 10 months I studied a colony’s development from scratch: from a late-spring swarm till the new spring one year later. Two (2) webcams filmed continuously in the beehive, at 15/fps, day and night. The videofiles were accelerated and compressed into 1 file of 11hours 35 minutes.
For the FIELDS exhibition in Riga, this long videofile was presented in a box with a peephole, in respect to the private life of the honeybees and their actions inside the beehive.
The Peephole, video installation, side – front and detail.
Slitscan representation of the 11:35 minutes Bee Monitoring video. The full length video is available in the opensource video database pandora
The Peephole (dancing bees) was presented
– as part of the Foraging Fields installation in the exhibition FIELDS, Riga – Latvia, from 15 may 2014 to august 4 2014.
ANTENNAE — AUTUMN 2024 (on dataism)
Notwithstanding its significance, data presents a great deal of uncertainty. From a material standpoint, it is both real and invisible; it is something that, in the process of being understood, both shapes and renders the world. Some see it as the pinnacle of human intellect, while others regard it as nothing more than an exploitative and monitoring system. In 2013, well before AI took the artworld by storm, New York Times political commentator David Brooks coined the term ‘dataism’. In his article ‘The Philosophy of Data”, Brooks posited that in an ever more intricate world, the utilisation of data could mitigate cognitive biases and shed light on latent behavioural patterns. More recently, according to scientist Albert-László Barabási, “Dataism is an artistic practice that acknowledges how data has become humanity’s principal means of understanding nature, characterising social processes, developing new technologies, and, increasingly, probing what makes us human. This approach to art making is fuelled by the conviction that art cannot escape, ignore, or bypass data if it wishes to remain relevant to the post-visual processes that shape our society”.
Antennae’s ‘Dataism’ focuses on the impact AI and other forms of data analysis and rendering are having on art making, curatorial practices, and writings that center on ecocritical themes. Which applications, modalities, engagements, and manifestations can be seen as productive? How can data analysis manifest what might otherwise remain idle? How can it expand our thinking remits and ability to connect? How can it instil empathy or promote alienation?