Wax MaGnets

Wax Magnets is an installation commissioned by the Ah Haa Arts Center in Telluride, Colorado. Five custom-built tabletops emit varied electromagnetic fields. The fields activate a swarm of hand held sonic objects that buzz and drone and glow, reacting to electromagnetic energy in the room.

Bees sense and respond to electromagnetic energy. Flowers with produce a positively-charged electric field when they have pollen. This field attracts bees, whose negatively charged bodies harvest the pollen while neutralizing the flowers’ positive field. Other bees know to avoid neutralized flowers until the positive electromagnetic field returns, meaning there is once again pollen to harvest.

In the installation, visitors are invited to play with this interaction, moving sonic objects in and out of the magnetic fields to create a buzzing, glitching ecosystem underscored by vibrating strings and speakers (also electromagnetic technologies) that are embedded in the tabletops and evolve with the shifting energy fields.