This piece is inspired by the current development of robotic bees by Harvard and by private companies. Micro robotics can be used for pollination in commercial farming, and as a solution in case of mass bee extinction.

It can seem dystopian to rely on robot insects, but to me it's beautiful to think that human creations could integrate into nature so perfectly that they someday would be indistinguishable from nature. The art we made to reflect nature becomes the source material. I often think about the movie 'Laputa, Castle in the Sky,' where a giant military robot takes care of the plants and animals in an Eden-like floating biome.

I've made the piece from parts of the clock radio I disassembled for the last project, plus broken items and thrifted objects. The frame is a damaged canvas that I scavenged, the ferns and fronds were a discarded Christmas decoration, the background is two trays from a toaster oven, the paint used is leftover from a painting I made in another class.

Most items are attached using wire wrapping, only some of which is visible. I feel like wire wrapping was appropriate to the project's theme. Little machine bees should probably fly on wires. Where I couldn't use wire, I used tacky glue. I attempted to keep the glue concealed because I don't think it would look as good.

I altered many objects by using paint and pens. For instance, the insect wings were made from a heavy-duty ziplock bag that I decorated with marker. The darker blue flowers are cut from a food container, then outlined with oil paint. The ferns are brushed with metallic paint, the green grass is painted wiring from the clock radio, the orange burrs are painted broken bulbs from some Christmas lights. I feel that using paint to alter these items made the image more cohesive and less subdued. The plastic ferns would have been too garish, and the wires would be too dull otherwise.

Overall, I'm proud of how this turned out. Being able to mix my own painting with the found objects makes me feel like I'm part of the future, that we are all part of the future as artists.