Flockfinder, 2024
Axidraw, Webcam, Pen, Paper
Real-time pen plotting: Plot the location of birds as they fly overhead, generating a map of a flock's motions over time
This piece began as a sense of awe. In Pittsburgh, it is not unusual to see flocks of thousands of crows darken the sky for hours at a time - it’s a local type of weather! I was never happy with the pictures I took of this sight. By freezing the birds in place, I lost the critical coherency of the flocks, and video was too information-dense to meaningfully parse. In real time, Flock Finder isolates birds from their environment and captures the motion of a flock over time on a single sheet of paper. In doing so, the environment is reintroduced from the perspective of birds. A line of birds represents the peaked roof of a building. A blank spot is a noisy intersection. A spiral of birds is a thermal. Flock Finder uses birds as a sensor to remap space.
This process embodies flocks of birds by hinting at what the world looks like from the perspective of their distributed intelligence.