Department of Zoology

"Hive Mind/Hived Minds" is part of a new exhibition called Imaging the Future, currently on display at the Gallery Project, a contemporary fine arts museum in Ann Arbor.

In a collaboration consisting of 26 artists, among them scientists, architects, engineers, and fashion designers, Imaging the Future is a multimedia exhibit exploring the future and what lies ahead, in a world facing environmental concerns such as global warming, the energy crisis, and green technology.  The result is a creative fusion of exhibits, spanning across many disciplines and media.

Professor Fred Dyer, a contributing artist for the exhibition introduces his installation, "Hive Mind/Hived Minds."  The display uses the live growth of a fully intact honey bee hive. The hive is encapsulated in a clear plastic tank and bathed in a red light, which allows visitors to view the hive.  (Bees are blind to the red light.)

The honey bee colony deals with the usual host of challenges: finding and storing food, building combs to rear the young, regulating nest climate, and defending the colony against diseases and predators.  Even though an artificial environment poses problems for the bees' adaptation, the bees thrive.  How do these colonies keep their environments cooperative, clean, efficient, and healthy?  And how might humans learn from this?

"Hive Mind/Hived Minds," compels us to consider these questions, and also to ask, how aware we ourselves are, of the adaptions we have to make to our environment.

Imaging the Future runs through June 13th.

"Imaging the Future" - news release

Read a review of the exhibition in the Ann Arbor News