24-year old Dickon Stone from Devon, England, never thought that he would make music with insects. As a child, he had a distaste of the six-legged creatures. A mishap with wasps did not help much to abate his dislike – he was stung badly on the head by a swarm at age 11. Stone’s father, a gardener, did instill in him a love for biology and ecology, though he confessed that it was not powerful enough to convert him into an insect worshipper. A Fine Arts graduate from London, he chose a career in the music industry instead – running club nights in London, djing and working at labels and booking agencies after he moved to Berlin in 2010.
Yet, things took a turn last year when he discovered that his curiosity for challenge and creativity were bigger than his childhood fear and he began attending regular Saturday workshops on beekeeping. It was within the beekeeping community that he met Cornelis Hemmer (of Berlin-Summt.de) and consequently Wolfgang Friedrichowitz, who generously gave him a hive of 10,000 bees which he transported home on the U-bahn, hidden in a traditional Indian sitar. It was, by far, one of the most nerve-racking situations of his life; “I tried to keep them away from people on the train. I was travelling from Steglitz to Tempelhof, and the train had to stop halfway due to bad weather. I was very wary about anyone looking at me, I kept imagining if one bee finds its way out, the rest will follow.”
Despite his fear of bees, Stone’s fervour for their music making potential outweighed his initial worries. Speaking about how the bees could be used to play the sitar, he explained that when the bees residing at the bottom of the sitar vibrate or move across the sympathetic strings of the instrument, with the use of amplification, recordings of the ensuing tingling and humming of the strings would be possible.
Sadly, Stone’s studio space was broken into last June and the bees and sitar were destroyed, just after the passionate ecology-lover had happened upon an amazing sight of his 10,000 bees resting happily on the flowers in the garden, humming their floral harmonies. However, the experimental musician has not been discouraged and intends to find a new roof space and to raise more funds for his project to document the entire process in audio and video and produce vinyl records and cassette tapes of the bees’ vibrations of the strings. He also hopes to showcase the empty sitar hive as a sculpture along with his audio and video work in galleries. Stone believes strongly in his idea of challenging the role of the composer by giving honeybees the ability to create music of their own and it’s this belief that pushes him on. “Nature doing its thing like this is comparable to a science experiment, I guess, but you don’t know what the outcome will be – I’m just “exploiting” the bees natural behaviour.” He said with conviction. “It’s experimental music – not subject to a time signature or preference of the human ear. It’s just bees in a sitar.”
If you are interested in following or funding Dickon Stone’s project, check out his fundraising page.
Images of Dickon by Hendrik Vorster.