Fireflies and Code

I'm back to doing some work in Processing, not to draw trees but bugs. A long story could be told about how I heard a story on Radiolab about Emergence, specifically a story about lightning bugs in South Asia that blink in sync, which led to my receiving a book for Christmas called Emergence, which helped inspire some new art work.

This is the first successful sketch I've written that really does the synchronization I heard about by the lightning bugs. You can interact with the little guys a bit, moving the mouse near them makes them stop blinking, getting out of sync, and they'll try to move away from you a bit as well.










(click the image to see the sketch)

The plan is to work out the "bugs" in the programming, and then build a nice little swarm of electronic lightning bugs that will have the same behavior, and be reactive to people around them as well.