Bug in the machine

In Invasives: Unknitting Despair in a Tangled Landscape, Catherine Bush wonders "How can I, child of immigrants, with a long cultural history of colonial extirpation behind me, object to the presence of other invasives"? My research starts in a similar place of self-reflection and a pandemic-induced desire to listen more to the landscape around me. I spent past summers, like many in the Northeastern U.S., squashing spotted lanternflies. In thinking about these so-called invaders, I felt unable to shake a sense of odd kinship with them and it was this feeling that became a catalyst for looking into the relationship between the movement of people and the movement of our non-human kin. This led me to trace lineages of 'transplants', questioning why we often don't include European species like Apis Mellifera (honeybee) when talking about non-native species: "The familiar… honey producer Apis Mellifera … was brought over by European colonists as part of the ecological package in which they conquered and transformed the New World with Old World flora and fauna" Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Empowering Nature.

Link to research document

"Bug in the Machine" reframes the Spotted Lanternfly, often labeled as an invasive pest, as a “bug” that exposes the man-made systems of consumption, trade, and ecological disruption. In parallel, I look at the Honeybee (Apis Mellifera), an ecological "darling" that that is actually equally an introduced species in the context of North America. Both insects arrived here through human intervention: the lanternfly accidentally via shipments of stone, the honeybee intentionally via European colonists. Today, honeybees feed on lanternfly honeydew, producing a new type of honey, an unexpected material trace of their interconnected histories.

I have spent the last three years researching both insects for this work, learning beekeeping, finding historical writings on the Spotted Lanternfly in China, understanding the cultural influences of non-native species in New York City (for example, the Tree-of-Heaven metaphor in Betty Smith's classic novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), and experimenting materially with lanternfly wings, plant matter, beeswax and insect pinning.

While I expect this work would evolve a lot, one aspect that I have begun to plan are large scale intaglio prints (using lasercut plexi) of ML generated lanternfly wings. The prints would use the spots of the wings to diagram the connections I have made in my research between things like global shipping routes, migration patterns, colonial histories, and cultural references. I am also experimenting with papermaking that incorporates insect wing material and plant matter through couching techniques, extending these connections into another tactile form.The second component I have started to plan/test is an interactive audio/video piece which uses a machine learning model I have trained on bee buzzing sounds from hives that I work with at my community garden in Flatbush, Brooklyn. I will use this ML model to generate a "voice" for the bees that will narrate the history of honeybees in North America, their adaptation to lanternfly honeydew,  discourses on alien-native/belonging-othering dichotomies and the broader consequences of human intervention in natural systems. The video would compliment this narrative with footage I've taken of my bees and surrounding lanternflies in the area, animations, and found archival content. I would also like to experiment with interaction, perhaps inviting audiences to "talk to the bees" (a play on the practice of 'telling the bees')  in order to prompt the narration.