The artists involved with the Honeycomb Project are Laura Byrne, Pat Byrne, Karen Hendy, Helena Malone, and myself. The community is an integral part of our proposed project, with the honeycomb being a buzzing sense of a community working together: collecting, cleaning, sorting, painting, testing and finally assembling the Honeycomb.
The Honeycomb is an 8ft hollow MDF cube which has 3,000 x 2 litre empty plastic bottles attached /protruding (they are secured by a small screw, through the cap, into the MDF). Each bottle contains a coloured LED bulb and battery, forming a vibrant multicoloured octagonal pattern. (see images below). This cube is being assembled, in Stradbally Hall for the Electric Picnic, onsite around a Copper Birch tree in the Main Arena.
The 3,000 bottles will form various sections of vivid colour. Each octagonal shape requires 24 x 2 litre bottles. Each bottle will have a coloured 2 pronged LED light and 3v battery fitted inside. This process is constructed by hand with the assistance of the local volunteers.
The bottles have been collected daily for the last 3 months, through donations from Stradbally residents and from each of our respective communities. AES Recycle Centre in Athy have also generously donated bottles to the project. The artists called to AES on a weekly basis to sort through the ‘plastic’ collection area to retrieve the suitable bottles. These are then transported to the Arthouse where they are washed, dried and stored into colour coded areas, by the local volunteers, awaiting construction.
The artists and volunteers commenced the construction process on the 23rd August 2011. 30 local volunteers, including members of the youth theatre, the youth centre and Cultúrbug turned up to assist.
In the couple of days in advance of Electric Picnic the LEDS will be connected to the batteries, dropped individually into the bottles and the caps replaced. The life-force of the 10mm photodiode LEDS is 50,000 hours and each battery is 10,000 hours so as to last for the duration of the assembly process and the event.