The light show: Flashing fireflies gathering and flying over digital images

Abstract

Computational Generative Art has been inspired by complex collective tasks made by social insects like the ants, which are able to coordinate through local interactions and simple stochastic behavior. In this paper we present the Light Show, an application of the mechanism of flash synchronization exhibited by some species of fireflies. The virtual fireflies from The Light Show gather and fly over digital readymades, self-choreographing the rhythm of illumination of their artistic habitats. We present a standard model with some design parameters able to control synchronization and also a variation able to exhibit clusters of sync at different phases that grow, fight, disappear or win, illuminating different parts of a digital image in an animated process.