1) David Bowen's Swarm, as described by Art in America, consists of “a plastic globe propped up by long rods attached to a wheeled platform, which moves erratically within a black circle on the floor. Its path...is determined by the progress of a swarm of flies captured inside the globe. A sensor attached to a microcontroller at the foot of this device translates the flies' aggregate movement into mechanical motion.”
2) A couple of days ago, Geoff Manaugh giddily reported that “a single-family home in California has been 'invaded' by bees—so much so that honey is now leaking from the electrical outlets, coming 'from a giant beehive behind the walls.'” After the bees, “honey-hungry ants” might soon arrive.
— now less unrelated:
In Walking Apiary, a foreclosed house is propped up by long rods attached to a wheeled platform, which moves erratically around an abandoned suburban development. Its path is determined not by the paved streets circling around empty lots but by the chaotic activities of bees that have colonized the house. Add more foreclosed houses droning with million of bees, and you have a roving urban honey farm.
It's an overwrought attempt at squishing Archigram into contemporary preoccupations with destabilized ecologies, unpaid mortgages and utopian food systems.
