swarm grid sensing

swarming and swarm performances are a long tradition. very often this concept is used to notice the individual behaviour in certain situations, like behavior in public space and the impact of one's personal individual self-perception if there is a set of rules present shaping the swarm behaviour. The most simple one is to swarm in public space with a very simple set of rules, defining the distance between the swarm - members and the individual and collective behavior e.g. if individuals are asked questions concerning their action and so on. In our case, we want to go further using the concept of swarming as a basic set enhancing it so we can collect individual notions and sensing of societal and personal feedback and response to our collecitve action. The workshop will be split into three phases:

Phase I
aims to introduce the swarming practice and the concept of city swarming as tool for social sculpture, challenge of the power and condition shaping behavior in different types of public space and to develop a series of swarming "performances" in public space. Therefor Phase I will include the decision on the rule sets that organize the swarming behavior and subsequently the swarms collective behavior.

Phase II
will be the swarming performances itself. Within the performances we will be a swarm acting according to the swarm organization - rules and thus shape or at least influence the actions in the public spaces we swarm at. But besides the performance, phase II is the sensing part of it. All swarm members will detect their internal feelings, notions of reactions caused by the swarm, and additionally we will carry out in phase I a set of interesting qualities and conditions in the public spaces, which we want to observe and detect during the swarming.

Phase III
is then to collect, compare and discuss, both the outcome of the swarming, and what we as swarm particles sensed and detected. The results will be discussed and presented in the lecture on the swarm sensing.