Melitosfex exhibition

As part of the 2023 Design Parade in Toulon, organized by Villa Noailles, Madeleine Oltra and Angelo De Taisne created the exhibition Melitosfex. This exhibition is themed around the bees, their queen, and their tool-body. The artists designed multiple objects and installations. For one of the installation, they invited web design studio F451 to participate.

Following the analogy of the queen bee’s secret chamber, they imagined how the queen monitors the beehive’s inhabitants. Based on a video of the hive entrance, four scripts analyse the entry and exit of each bee, according to its position, movements and time spent in this transitional space. This system functions as an ambient control room, granting the queen bee the ability to supervise her colony. To typeset the data, they chose to use Fanny Hamelin’s PoW Garnier, to contrast with the impersonal appearance of the screens.