China

The work can be divided into two parts. Part A is a programme inducing the portraits by a camera. The particle perception camara an catch image and thereby construct a “mirror image” of human being. Particles possess potential energy of movement, which is the repulsive force among particles and their cohesion force in the center of the image.

Part B follows three relationships: seperation, cohesion and alignment. The computer can simulate the natural phenomenon of flocking behavior with these three relationships. By flock behavior, I mean a flock of animals, like fishes, birds and insects, that possess the living features. According to the Thiessen polygon theory, there are two relationships between “visible” particles and their neighbor particles – adjacency and connection.

The crucifix relationship between two parts

Verticality – including and being included

After recognizing a human image, numerous particles in Part A will all join up to make a single particle containing identity information which is immediately transformed to the programme of Part B. Part B marks all natures of this particle in its programme, including formation time, geodesic latitude and longitude coordinates, speed, accelerated speed, angular velocity, color and size.

Horizontality – external decision and internal decision

In Part A, the image formed by particles may be decided or influenced by the image recognized by the camera. The forming process is affected by external factors with certain purposes.

In Part B, particles are in three relationships – “seperation”, “cohesion” and “alignment”. This spontaneous grouping is also called “flocking behavior”, which means a collective movement with a great number of self-prompted behaviors, while individuals aimlessly form a macroscopical movement. 

Form

The work shows the weaving relationship among particles with visible data as well as sound. Triggered by sound, when there are information being transformed between the two parts, the programme will emit high-frequency sine waves along with extremely quick flashes on the screen.

Reflection

Building of social structure determines the “position” of an individual. The subtle changes between individuals in the social relations also shaping the macroscopic “pattern” of the society. Two parts of the work explore this issue deeply. Overall, Part A is the external cause that determins the  macro-structure of the collective. Part B spontaneously generates a acentric collective structure because of the relationship among individuals. Individually, the intention about “weave” reflects the abstract social relations between human beings, which is simply summarized as “separation, cohesion, and alignment”. The individual Part A with the “separation and cohesion” relationship continues to affect the entire pattern, resulting in dynamic ripples and fluctuations. By following these three relationships, Part B will be able to simulate the random motion of organic groups, named “Flocking Behavior” (In 1986, Craig Reynolds created a simulation of flocking behavior with computer and documented the algorithm in his paper “Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model.”) Like a huge network, many objects are both interrelated and independent. It is simply as a kind of relationship about “weave”. Here the “weave” can be understood as “to follow certain rules of the organization.” Such rules may be an external setting or an internal generation.