“Emergent Behavior” by Thomas Jackson

I remember artist and photographer Thomas Jackson from his “Robot series” on an earlier post I published long before this new blog was started.
In Emergent Behavior, Jackson coaxes scores of disposable objects like keg cups, marshmallows, glow sticks and Post-it notes into persuasively organic formations. The vast variety of ways that swarms manifest in the world — in the animal kingdom, robotics, biology — affords Jackson a lot of conceptual material to work with. The images are created without the use of Photoshop unless of course when it comes standard colour and contrast adjustments.  The series undergo a constant development which can be appreciated from the first to the last shots. The artist explains this series as follows:

EMERGENT BEHAVIOR

The hovering installations featured in this ongoing series of photographs are inspired by self-organizing, “emergent” systems in nature such as termite mounds, swarming locusts, schooling fish and flocking birds. The images attempt to tap the mixture of fear and fascination that those phenomena tend to evoke, while creating an uneasy interplay between the natural and the manufactured and the real and the imaginary. At the same time, each image is an experiment in juxtaposition. By constructing the installations from unexpected materials and placing them where they seem least to belong, I aim to tweak the margins of our visual vocabulary, and to invite fresh interpretations of everyday things.

via Thomas Jackson Photography