Making Art for Bees

Michael Candy’s Synthetic Pollenizer is “a sculpture for a different species.”

Featured on atlasobscura.com

WHEN HUMANS WANT TO GRAB a bite to eat, they can raid the pantry, hop down to the corner store, or make a reservation at an expensive restaurant. When pollinating insects want a snack, they, too, choose among local plants. But for a few years, bees in Dookie, Victoria also had a fast-casual option: the Synthetic Pollenizer, a mechanical canola flower that serves up real nectar and pollen. The machine, made by artist Michael Candy, stood in a field in Dookie for part of last year. It’s designed to give bees an experience usually confined to the human realm, while letting humans in on a slightly more bee-like one.

Candy, who lives in Brisbane, specializes in creations that interact with their environments at various scales: his other works include a chair that “walks” with the help of the person sitting in it, and a public statue that weeps whenever a bombing occurs anywhere in the world. After spending time with field biologists at a conference a few years ago, he was inspired to make “a sculpture for a different species,” he explains. He began collaborating with some experts, including a beekeeper and a resource ecologist.

Scientists have long created artificial pollination devices to help them study bees. But, Candy explains, these tend to be “really boring flowers—just jars with holes with them.” The Synthetic Pollenizer is more of a multisensory bee experience, providing decor as well as nutrition. Canola pollen, which Candy purchases in bulk, courses from a repository up through a hose and ends up at a brass flower, where it is extruded by a “mechanical anther.” Meanwhile, nectar moves through a similar system and squirts out of the center of the flower. There’s even a surveillance element: When a bee visits, a small, motion-activated camera clicks on, and streams footage of the customer to YouTube.

When it’s placed in a field of natural canola, the Pollenizer is clearly an imposter. It looks like a “real” plant the same way that a fast food joint looks like a “real” restaurant: it’s got smoother surfaces, brighter colors, and more visible automation. While other flowers sway organically in the breeze, it stands stiff and still. And rather than being tucked demurely into stems and roots, its plumbing is clearly visible: gears twist, pistons fire, and pollen and nectar chug through tubes.

Click here to read the full article.