Artist Statement
Emergence is a real world phenomenon where a series of extremely simple actions come together to form a larger network or pattern. The complex array of LED’s that are installed in this space is my attempt at creating an emergence pattern. I and the study of emergence particularly fascinating because it tends to shatter our conventional understanding of order. Order as we know it needs an engineer, but who is the engineer of an ant farm? Did one ant plan the entire building project and oversee the construction? Or did it just happen.

“An individual ant, like an individual neuron, is just about as dumb as can be. Connect enough of them together properly, though, and you get spontaneous intelligence.”
- Steven Johnson

We can observe how emergence works through a practical example, and this project creates an emergent pattern. Everything is connected in complexity; everyone who walks into the gallery contributes to this system. What can the projects emergent properties show or teach us? How does it relate to other complex systems such as cities or evolution? Using the audience as the means of creating the emergent pattern is a way for them to better visualize and interact with the concept. There are only three colors, Red, Green, and Blue, because I feel too many colors would be distracting. The audience can more easily understand what the colors represent based on color psychology. People generally relate red to hot and blue to cold. In the piece, red LED's represent high volume of people and blue LED's represent a low volume of people. The square shape is to be viewed as a map of the gallery space so the audience can see how everyone's position relates to the LED board.