LAB

We are collaborating with Scott's Circus Creations (Rotterdam) on Flicker — an experimental circus theater performance fusing circus, theater, music and drone technology. A streetlamp repair man encounters a mischievous light being: “only by shining a light on who we really are can we illuminate and fix the things that truly matter.”

LuminousBees provides the technical and artistic drone integration. The 30–60 minute performance is designed for outdoor spaces, with indoor venues anticipated later. Work-in-progress showings begin summer 2027. Supported by Culture Moves Europe (EU / Goethe-Institut).

• Feb 2023First contact via email
• Jul 2023First in-person meeting — project officially started
• 2024Developing the creative process and communication workflow
• Sep 2024Residency — first joint creation and testing
• 2024Secured first funding for the show
• 2026Production phase
• 2027First work-in-progress showings

Our largest show to date — 256 LuminousBees swarmed from the runway of Asiago airport at 1000m altitude for the 19th edition of Fiocchi di Luce. A 10-minute aerial choreography over the plateau, visible across the entire valley.

200 luminous drones illuminated the night sky above Sciarborasca for the Croce d'Oro eco-festival — a celebration of community and sustainability in the Ligurian countryside.

We joined the SFIDA project, an EU-funded research initiative developing autonomous drone systems for cliff erosion surveillance and civil protection. Our UWB positioning technology and lightweight drone platforms are being adapted for geological monitoring.

Joint testing session with Collmot/Skybrush in Budapest — validating our fleet with their firmware and ground station software. Three days of intensive outdoor test flights, swarm coordination experiments, and firmware tuning with Gábor Vásárhelyi and the Skybrush team.

Our most sustained project — 18 consecutive weekends of aerial performances over the waters of Genova's Porto Antico, from May to September. Innovative emotional communication for tourist valorization, transforming the old harbour into an open-air stage every weekend.

“Genova lancia sul web il Trivago delle aziende per prodotti e tecnologie” — Italy’s leading financial newspaper features LuminousBees as an example of innovative LED drone technology for shows and digital choreographies.

Our research paper on aerial data visualization driven by a deep neural network specialized in music recognition was presented at the international ACM ARTECH 2019 conference in Braga, Portugal. Where artificial intelligence choreographs the sky.

An intimate indoor drone performance for Christmas — our luminous swarm danced alongside performer Agostino Retrò in a poetic fusion of technology and human expression. A proof of concept for indoor Aerial Media Arts.

LuminousBees received the Special Mention "Made in Italy" at the UniCredit Start Lab, one of Italy's most prestigious startup programs. A recognition of our commitment to developing all technology in-house, from PCB design to flight software.

Interactive Micro Aerial Robotic Swarm — a 3-day international academic conference organized by LuminousBees with the University of Genoa at the Campus Universitario di Savona, 20–22 February 2017.

Seminars and workshops at the intersection of Art, Science and Technology — defining the relationships within the ecosystem of artistic, scientific and technological research. This was the moment we formally established Aerial Media Arts as a discipline.

Documented by Pierluigi Capucci (Noemalab), one of Italy's most important voices in media art theory: "Luminous Bees. Dancing Among Art, Science and Technology."

The first pilot project of LuminousBees in the field of Aerial Media Arts. SuperOrganism is a 6-part system connecting live bee observation, computer vision and aerial drone choreography — proposed for Ars Electronica, Linz.

Inspired by the biology of honey bees and their eusocial organization, the project envisions an extended SuperOrganism: a hyper-ecosystem encompassing the animal, vegetable and human worlds, as well as the world of data and robots.

November 2016 — the first working prototype of a LuminousBee comes to life. The custom PCB in its unmistakable X-shape, with integrated LED panels that turn the entire volume into a single luminous body. Presented at our first press conference — from this moment, everything began.