STIGMERGY

Stigmergy is a silkscreen print representing one of the most iconic moments of the live-media performance Dökk: in room six, the visualisations of the filaments that initially describe the universe are transformed into axons and dendrites through a construction of stigmergic nature. 

Stigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination whereby the trace left in an environment by an individual stimulates the same action by another set of individuals. The usual example of this are ants, which always follow a path already predetermined by other sets of ants. Stigmergy is usually likely to reinforce behaviours within a population over time.

This mechanism has been employed as a visual inspiration for one room of Dökk, where the particles visualised retrace the paths already delineated by other particles.

The silkscreens feature a very high definition of the particles that form the graphic, remaining true to the visual aesthetics and level of detail present in Dökk visuals. Another important element is the range of grayscale, starting from a very light shade and culminating in an opaque black.

The prints were created together with a local print studio named Medulla, old collaborators and friends of fuse*. Medulla often works with organic materials and pigments: for this particular print, they created a palette of greys of various intensities, blending together two different types of graphite. The application of colour was split into four main levels, and a different tone of grey was used for each of them. The high resolution of particles was achieved thanks to a canvas of 100 threads per linear centimetre, each with a diameter of 40 microns.

Stigmergy is an artwork by fuse*

Hand-printed by Medulla