Since 2007, Random International’s Swarm Study series has experimented with the expressive power of collective behaviour and our overwhelming instincts to emotionally engage with possibly sentient, artificial entities.
In Algorithmic Swarm Study (Triptych), a large, autonomous swarm lives across an even larger habitat. Three separate screens act as a synchronized looking glass into the world of this life form, which is spatially aware of the physical boundaries of its digital habitat. The abstract de-facto cohabitation of humans with ubiquitous algorithmic processes suddenly becomes amplified and more concrete in this interaction. As with most of our other algorithmic swarm studies, this family shows behavioural traits which change both over time, and in response to the viewer.
Biases are present in the tracking software and hardware that Random International use.
The studio utilises machine learning and computer vision algorithms with internet-trained models and thus internet-scale biases relating to gender, race, age, and other categories of bias. Random International aim to develop a thorough understanding of the API’s biases and their potential harm, challenging and improving the studio’s tools and processes in order to minimise them.
