Swarm Legacies Response 01/18/12
Swarm logics, self organization and emergent forms may seem like intimidating and foreign ideas within discussions pertaining to society, politics and contemporary architectural discourse. The unfamiliarity and perceived irrelevance of swarm intelligence and how it pertains to the human world is more likely a result of previous technologic incapability’s, preventing accurate and timely study of swarms and there resulting importance, not just in the natural worlds of organisms but within the confines of civilization and their resulting artefacts that grow as a response to societies changing needs.
Leach discusses the emerging field of swarm studies and how they are increasingly proving relevant in understanding bottom-up self emergent strategies and understanding of the human environment. Although swarm studies seem to productively lend intelligent insight into a large number of areas pertaining to human organization networks and understanding of processes within the city and architecture, it seems that the question of autonomy and free will within the human makes the implications of swarm studies more complicated then when exploring how swarm operates within a colony of ants or flocking birds.
Human movement through a city may seem to yield swarm like behaviours and emergent response, however attention to the individual and people’s desire for power must be better explored to fully understand and find meaningful swarm logics within a human population. Swarms give insight to bottom-up organization and Leach argues that this is prevalent in the discourse of the city, which must question the role of the master-plan. Although a city may seem to operate and emerge from bottom up principles the idea that humans have a cognitive ability beyond that of other swarming organisms to make choices, rational and irrational based on any number of criteria. Additionally humans have the ability to desire and want, something that is not prevalent in other animals. Humans may possess the desire to have power and control people. This will lead to unpredictable patterns of disruptions within the apparent swarm logics. Birds, fish and ants (all swarming organisms) only desire survival and as a result make choices specific to what will promote life. Humans, although it may seem obvious that all should desire survival, it is not safe to assume that all humans will always act in response to propagate this need. Humans consciously and continuously choose to engage in activities that are not necessarily conducive to their fitness and increased survival. Dangerous sporting activities, choosing to drive, eating fast-food, joining the army and suicide are just a few examples how humans make choices that do not always encourage and foster a desire for life.
Accounting for free will and human desires does not mean that swarms logics and intelligence cannot be mapped to human societies it is just that the number of variables of which the swarm responds to must be infinitely large, and as a result the necessary computationally simulations must be necessarily complex and intensive, beyond what current computing power can accommodate. This is not to say that one day the tools and programs will not be there to necessarily study swarm accurately within human society, it may just take some time. Similar to the fact that Swarm studies is a relatively new discipline due in large part to previous technologic implications, so to it stands that swarm studies complex enough to study human societies may need improvement and advancement.
A very interesting point is Leach’s claim, with support from Deluze and Guattari is that Gothic architecture operates as a bottom-up design, responding to forces and flows as a smooth science that responds to forces, flows and process. The idea of Gothic architecture has been something I have found compelling for sometime as a vehicle for lending a substantive argument to the legitimacy of process driven and evolving architecture. Previously personal discourse revolving around Gothic architecture focused on its similarities to digital and parametric architecture, exploring the role of rule based design, not only in regards to material constraints and the desire to make higher and larger, but the use of the golden ratio and other design criteria that was perceived as ordained and to exist within the word of God. Gothic cathedrals were not a response to a vision of an architect and their desire to have their idea last forever, but was a response to create a house for God to create and design based off rules laid out within the bible and evident through nature.
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