This piece was done for Tiny Art for All, a project involving temporary installations in galleries built in the style of little free libraries and placed along the Northampton Rail Trail. Tiny Art for All was sponsored in part by the Mass Cultural Council.
This project, a multi-layered artwork on transparent sheets, was added to from the period of June 9th – August 4th, 2023 for a total of 11 stages. It was inspired by the forms of bird flocks and other natural grouping behaviors.
Murmuration is the specific word for a flock of starlings. The purpose of forming such large flocks may be to evade predators, share information, or to find a place to roost as a group.
Individuals of a large flock or other grouping decide how to move based on 3 principles:
- Separation – each bird avoids colliding with its neighbors
- Alignment – each bird heads in generally the same direction as 6 or 7 of its nearest neighbors
- Cohesion – each bird stays in the general vicinity of the other birds
The movement and form that come from this are an emergent phenomenon, arising from the interaction of many individuals with no apparent leader.
The characteristics of flocks are of enough interest to scientists that in 1986, Craig Reynolds created a program named Boids that simulated the motion and behavior of a flock. Several places online where you can play with Boids are:
https://eater.net/boids
https://boids.cubedhuang.com/
