Acid Springfield approached a Naarm-based urban beekeeper collective with an out-there idea: to bridge the expanding gap between humans and nature, could we transform the inner workings of a honey bee colony into something people can directly connect with and relate to - music composed by the bees themselves? Our elevator pitch: a twenty-thousand-piece orchestra with the human musician acting as conductor. The project has taken many forms: live events, museum exhibitions, an album, a short film, and continues to evolve...
SOFT VIBRATIONS
HONEY FINGERS COLLECTIVE X ACID SPRINGFIELD
LIVE LISTENING EXPERIENCE // We held an event on Honeyfinger’s Apairy rooftop, inviting guests to experience a once-in-a-lifetime night of live bee music, honey tasting, and local food and wine. Over the course of the event, the score shifted - when the colony was calm, the music was stable and placid and when the colony was lively, so too was the music, constantly mutating and shifting as the sun set against the Melbourne skyline.
EXHIBITIONS // We’ve presented the project as an exhibition at BRAG in Western Aus, updating the hive to a clear plexiglass structure so that people can get an even closer
look at the inner workings of a colony. We then showcased the whole project with a special indoor live performance with bees at At The Above gallery in Melbourne.
SOFT VIBRATIONS ALBUM// Going into this project, our dream outcome was to create something that people with no access to a hive could listen to and feel
a little closer to bees and nature. Everything collected in our time on the rooftop was recorded, with the highlights compiled into four pieces that make up a Soft Vibrations album,
released in December 2023. The record is an artifact of urban honeybee life, documenting the various moods and activities of a working colony.
