Pollinate is a small band of creatives on a mission to bring plant reproduction awareness to everyday life in vivid color. The late Kenny Davis lives on in this vision to celebrate public space and come together for a common cause.

Worker bees use the waggle dance to communicate the distance, direction, and quality of a nectar-rich flower patch to her fellow honeybees. The bee becomes language. The hive learns. While waggling, the line of the dance relative to the sun’s azimuth tells the hive which direction to go. The number of waggles tells the hive how long it will take to get there.

Santiago Calatrava designed the Oculus with a specific relationship to the solar azimuth on September 11th, in remembrance of the 911 tragedy at WTC. Mapping the honey bee’s waggle dance along this azimuth in the light-filled cathedral transports exhibit participants into the tiny world of the bee while making global connections to food production and environmental awarenes.

On a fun note, the Oculus transit center also looks like an enormous honey bee.

office of objects, Duggal, and Opiary produced a prototype for Pollinate NYC that displayed in Oculus park from April to July 2022. Next tops are Newark International Airport. The project is currently in value engineering and fund raising to install at the transit center.