Flock, 2008-2012

Artist Statement for Flock (2008–11)

Flock is an exploration of human communication, improvisation, and group dynamics through the lens of technology, embodied movement, and public space. Using bicycles, wearable LED circuits, and sonar technology, the project invites participants to navigate unfamiliar urban environments as a cohesive, yet spontaneous, group. The work draws inspiration from the flight patterns of birds—how flocks synchronize their movements, communicate without verbal language, and adapt to the constant flow of their environment. By placing participants in a game-like scenario, Flock investigates the ways in which humans negotiate space and form connections, relying on intuition, gesture, and sensory cues.

The project centers around wearable capes with alternating LED light patterns and embedded sonar devices, creating a game where participants must stay within a certain proximity to one another while interpreting the changing visual signals. Each cape displays a unique light pattern, and the participants, without a fixed order, must spontaneously create a communicative system to maintain synchrony. The addition of sonar, a prosthetic sense of proximity, further enhances the experience, encouraging participants to navigate through auditory cues, mimicking creatures that use sonar for communication and environmental awareness.

At its core, Flock is about the fluidity of movement, the power of improvisation, and the aesthetic and poetics of group interaction. It encourages participants to transcend conventional methods of navigation and explore new ways of being in the world. The use of cycling—an activity that can be simultaneously personal and collective—serves as a metaphor for this fluid choreography. Riding in a group is a dynamic and empowering experience, where the rush of wind and the freedom from traditional traffic constraints create a shared rhythm that is as much about intuition as it is about collaboration.

Flock challenges participants to engage with public space as a canvas for collective performance, where the boundaries between individual and group dissolve, and new forms of communication emerge through the convergence of technology, movement, and human connection. Through this work, I sought to create a space where the familiar act of movement in public could become an emergent, playful, and poetic experience—a relational choreography where the unpredictability of human interaction and the sensory perception of space create a continuously evolving, shared narrative.