The adventures of Maya or bees' communication explained
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This impressive artistic project showcased very beautiful specimens of bees, a beehive in a tree containing entirely designed by the students. Its aim was to explain how bee hives survive through the meaningful exchange of perfectly orchestrated information and communication in order to overcome numerous obstacles and predators. The storyline was constructed around three episodes each illustrating information and communication situations that arise as the bees buzz around to accomplish their daily tasks.
It is constructed around the central character of Maya, a foraging honeybee whose role it is to help the other bees organise their work, find food and defend the queen and the hive from alien and hostile neighbours. To explain how the different information & communication theories operate in this setting, the students explained how Maya communicates with other bees through the prism of Wiener's cybernetic theory: Bees communicate information (where to find food, the presence of danger) to the rest of the community through specific dance patterns (rounds or waggle dance). Bees in the same colony receive and correctly interpret these dances and then act accordingly, sending the necessary feedback that enable the complex system to auto-regulate itself.
It is constructed around the central character of Maya, a foraging honeybee whose role it is to help the other bees organise their work, find food and defend the queen and the hive from alien and hostile neighbours. To explain how the different information & communication theories operate in this setting, the students explained how Maya communicates with other bees through the prism of Wiener's cybernetic theory: Bees communicate information (where to find food, the presence of danger) to the rest of the community through specific dance patterns (rounds or waggle dance). Bees in the same colony receive and correctly interpret these dances and then act accordingly, sending the necessary feedback that enable the complex system to auto-regulate itself.
The hive is perceived as a society seeking to auto-regulate itself via the transmission and reception of messages. Students also referred to systemics theory of Ludwig Von Bertalanffy who inspired Wiener's cybernetics. According to the systemics theory, the self is constructed through interactions with others and isolated acts do not exist because everything is connected, thus reaffirming the circular causality of phenomena. Evoking Shannon's mathematical theory of communication (MTC), the students explained that in such a system, the degree of uncertainty is low and therefore entropy is also reduced because the inhabitants of the hive understand one another through the use of common codes and language. Thus a low degree of entropy while corresponding to a low degree of surprise and of information in Shannon's MTC, is actually a good thing in Wiener's cybernetic theory where a high level of entropy is synonymous with disorganisation, chaos and disintegration of a system. In a second episode, Maya's meeting with bees from a foreign tribe led a situation of non-communication. The students called in Gregory Bateson's theories on interpersonal communication and the resulting Palo Alto's 5 axioms of communication, particularly the axiom that "to communicate is to enter into the orchestra" and employ the same language and be in harmony with the others.
In a third episode, a perilous situation occurs: Maya and the other bees had to defend the hive from an attacking hornet. To explain how the apparently weaker target - the bees and their queen managed to vanquish the powerful attacker (the hornet), the students drew once again from Wiener's cybernetics theory where intelligent systems, when faced with a task, learn from past signals or occurrences (past actions) of their interlocuteur (or rather signals and information emitted by the attacker (the hornet) in order to anticipate the future actions of the latter and learn from his/her mistakes. Through this cybernetic process of self-adaptative system, the bees learnt that hornets cannot bear a body heat above a certain temperature. Hence, by getting into a defensive formation and completely surrounding the attacker, the naturally weaker bees managed to suffocate the hornet and thereby save their queen and their ecosystem. The video below summarises all this in French. Further explanations on this fascinating and scientifically studied bees communication system can be viewed here.
In a third episode, a perilous situation occurs: Maya and the other bees had to defend the hive from an attacking hornet. To explain how the apparently weaker target - the bees and their queen managed to vanquish the powerful attacker (the hornet), the students drew once again from Wiener's cybernetics theory where intelligent systems, when faced with a task, learn from past signals or occurrences (past actions) of their interlocuteur (or rather signals and information emitted by the attacker (the hornet) in order to anticipate the future actions of the latter and learn from his/her mistakes. Through this cybernetic process of self-adaptative system, the bees learnt that hornets cannot bear a body heat above a certain temperature. Hence, by getting into a defensive formation and completely surrounding the attacker, the naturally weaker bees managed to suffocate the hornet and thereby save their queen and their ecosystem. The video below summarises all this in French. Further explanations on this fascinating and scientifically studied bees communication system can be viewed here.
The photo gallery below show pictures of some of the other arts projects designed by the students in this 2018 winter course.
2018 Vintage |
2019 Vintage
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