The Migration series is an experiment in images that is a response to experiencing the natural world. The city of Troy, NY becomes home to large number of crows at various times during the year. I enjoy watching their massive group behavior. They appear to move as one being instead of many when they swarm the sky. These vignettes represent my attempt to recreate a time-lapse experience and capture the complex and graceful avian movement. Each individual image manifests as a different interpretation of mathematized nature. Whereas, one goal of computer graphics is to simulate our perception of the natural world as accurately as possible. This goal is to create aesthetic interpretations of the natural world. Despite my efforts, unintended patterns emerge indicating that the machine is still running the show.
What continues to be interesting about these images is the conflict between trying to develop an emergent animal-like behavior and the systematic geometric or mathematical forms that appear.
The left side images show the entire resulting simulation. The right side is a detail of the left. Each image is output via a chromia process to archival photo paper at 30 in x 30 in.