SWARM is a large scale kinetic art piece. It consists of a number of robotic spheres directed by a mothership, actuated by motors, and guided by GPS to create moving formations evocative of the animal world and the world of dance. They are simple, but together they behave in ways more complex than one could predict; a lot like life.
manifesto
Nothing escapes the ineluctable embrace of entropy, the one-way trip of our Universe toward chaos and heat death. Yet at least on one small sphere, our planet, there is a rude and surprising exception: LIFE. As time progresses, everything becomes less organized, but LIFE is an exception. It grows more complicated, and more interesting. Schroedinger calls this organizational drive negentropy - when things want to be ALIVE. Negentropy is a honeybee colony and a night at the opera. Negentropy is a Bronx cheer in the face of Death. The SWARM of autonomous beings by their very nature will have emergent and complex behavior. They will flock , flirt, dance and interact, and their actions will surprise and astonish even us, their creators. They are simple, but together they will behave in ways more complex than we can predict. A lot like LIFE .
check it out here or watch the swarm video here
ciao
db