Bee sounds become a walk-in installation

The sound installation is based on Hofmann's master's thesis at the Zurich University of the Arts. The musician investigated which sounds can be heard in a beehive. He makes the previously barely heard noises and sounds audible through body sound recordings.

In an oversized, walk-in beehive, visitors to the Zoological Museum of the University of Zurich can discover the secrets of bee sounds. Inside the hive, they can hear bees crawling on the floor like menacing drum rolls, while splashing, dripping and pitter-pattering can be heard on the honeycombs. When they leave the hive, they move along the bees' approach path. At first there is a classical humming sound, but soon the humming is replaced by human voices, which move through the space just like the bees.

For the recordings, Hofmann housed a bee colony in a test box equipped with microphones and soundproofed it with 300 kilograms of sand. He connected the special microphones to a computer and did all this in the presence of the bee colony, which was supposed to behave as naturally as possible.

Hofmann worked with professionals from the fields of physics, sound engineering, film, photography and carpentry, as well as with beekeepers. And he founded an ad hoc choir to transform the sound of nature into the sound of culture in the bees' approach path. Young people and adults keen to experiment transformed the natural sound of bees into their own aesthetic expression, based on the sounds and movements of bees.

More info: www.zm.uzh.ch