Bristle-Bot swarming

RSA Animate - The Power of Networks

In this new RSA Animate, Manuel Lima, senior UX design lead at Microsoft Bing, explores the power of network visualisation to help navigate our complex modern world.

TED Talk: Matt Ridley: When Ideas Have Sex

At TEDGlobal 2010, author Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It's not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.

Flocking Behavior in Schools of Fish

A big influence on my artwork is a group behavior among social animals called flocking. Whether it is schools of fish, flocks of birds or swarms of ants; there really is a group intelligence at play that is reminiscent of both neurons in the brain as well as traffic patterns in cities... Although I do think that the fish have cars beat hands down as far as elegantly working together as a group.

Ant Colony's Subterranean Structure

I am always interested in architecture that is created not from a particular blueprint, but from necessity itself... It is self-organizing, so there is never one single designer instructing how the structure should be built. Ant colonies are the perfect example of that. In these videos, scientists pour aluminum or cement into the tunnels and chambers of ant colonies, and upon excavation, it shows the vastness of a gigantic network of tunnels.

Cities at Night, an Orbital Tour Around the World

Back on the subject of architecture, except this time on the larger scale of city planning, this is an amazing video from a few years back of images of cities around the world taken from space. It is very interesting to see the differences in the shapes of the cities. Much of this, of course, has to do with local geography such as moutains, lakes and coastal regions. But look at the differences between the newer cities and the older ones, and then even the differences between eastern and western cities.

The more grid-structured cities as opposed to the more organically-structured is my main interest. The obvious connection between the structure of cities and the structure of the brain is unavoidable when you look at these images.

This is another video well worth watching full screen.

Starlings Flocking

I am always baffled by this phenomenon. It is amazing that such a visual spectacle is achieved simply by each bird paying close attention and reacting to what its immediate neighbors are doing. And then, using this local behavior, a slight change in one bird's flight pattern radiates outward to the entire mass.