Swarm Matter is an ongoing project exploring the generation of ornamental geometries through agent based formation of non-linear hierarchies and emergent patterns. The research project questions the contemporary understanding of component logic as elements which are subservient to a topological ordering device such as surface. Instead this exploration looks at the ability of the macro order to emerge from the interaction of components at a local level. Consequently instead of arraying components on surfaces these components are distributed using an algorithmic swarm logic and parametrically adjust based on their neighbors. This agent or collective intelligence embedded within the components avoids the need for an a priori distinction between various tectonic elements and enables a dissolution of normative architectonic hierarchies. This is an investigation into creating a constantly shifting relationship between line, component and surface. While there are no hierarchies encoded into the Swarm Matter project, local and shifting hierarchies arise as an emergent property of the system. The project is concerned both with the emergence of figure through complex order from a field as well as the dissolution of the figure into abstraction. At a local level a component has no base state, but will adapt to its condition, consequently while local moments of periodicity may occur a definitive reading of the component is resisted by its constant shifting to another state based on its swarm relationship. Similarly symmetries while not being inherent within the system, emerge from specific interactions of components.
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