Date(s) - December 16, 2018
Time - 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm

This is a third-party event not organised by Permablitz. We've added it because we reckon it looks pretty good!

Location - Hepburn Primary School

Why Listen to Bees?
(FIELD TRIP) 1pm for a 1.30pm start

https://liquidarchitecture.org.au/events/why-listen-to-bees

What does sound mean to a bee? The bee, it seems, is a rather noisy animal. There are many meanings in the different modulations of a bee’s buzz, from the happy hum of a nectaring hive, to sharp alarm tones, the queen’s regal ‘tooting’, or the oscillating fever of ‘attack pitch’. Even the famous bee ‘waggle dance’ involves sound, through the propagation of communicative sonic pulses. So in addition to its floral syntax, “reading” flowers and their various visual signals (coloured, shaped and chemical), it is clear the bee has a sound language; that bees make and respond to sound; that bees are sound-ful.

How do we, with our human ears and human brains, make sense of these sounds? Can we learn to listen to bees through the prism of their own experience, instead of ours? How might it be possible to become more ‘bee-centric’ or even ‘bee-like’ in our listening?

On 16 December:
[The Old School]
An esteemed Dja Dja Warrung elder will offer words of welcome and reflection on bees, lore and country. KIRSTEN BRADLEY will offer concentrated reflections on the human history of bees contrasted with bees’ own culture, with poetic contributions from ANNE E. STEWART. NICK RITAR will share collected observations on listening, feeling and meaning in the context of “keeping”. NATHAN CURNOW will present a new ‘bee suite’ of poetic works. SHOHN MURNANE will gather us in the composition of an unfurling collective drone experience.

[Melliodora]
NICK RITAR and KIRSTEN BRADLEY will guide us to the permaculture farm Melliodora, and invite participants into a group hive-listening experience, with honeyed drinks and snacks to follow.