Stigmergy

Date2016

MediumIntaglio print

Dimensions15 × 23 in. (38.1 × 58.4 cm)

ClassificationsPrintmaking

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Escalette Endowment

Object number2018.5.3

Label TextShanahan’s work draws on patterns inherent in nature. The works on display here are from his body of work The Ecstasy of Matter, and portray nuances in shapes and patterns observed at the atomic and sub-atomic levels. From a time lapse print of a differential growth curve, to a clustering of cells in a Voronoi tessellation, to a simulation of bird flocking behavior based on Craig Reynold’s BOIDS algorithm, Shanahan’s work explores patterns as they are expressed through time and space.
As the artist explains, “The purpose of these drawings is to describe nature as form distinct from substance, as patterns and arrangements that lie beneath the immediate reality of objects…What is born to our eyes as the world of things is a phenomenon of fields of energy colliding into each other, a self-assembling system of relations that scales infinitely through time and space, in which what goes on outside our consciousness and within it are the same process.”

This work is a Time lapse print simulating bird flocking behavior, based on Craig Reynolds BOIDS algorithm, which models each member of the “flock” as an individual agent optimizing its separation, alignment, and cohesion to its neighbors. The result is complex group behavior based on simple rules with no hierarchical planning

[Keck Exhibition, 2018]

Status

On view

Location