CROSSING PATHS
AUDIOVISUAL ARTWORK
CROSSING PATHS
The phrase 'crossing paths' describes a meeting between two people, usually by chance.
Crossing Paths is an artwork that explores random movement and spontaneous decision-making. The visuals and the audio are created uniquely each time the piece plays, determined by the behaviour of a group of 'snakes'.
The snakes begin in a totally free environment, where each new direction is chosen at random. They try to avoid colliding with themselves, and are only guided by the appearance of food, which leads to them growing in length, and splitting to create new snakes.
For a snake to get longer it must remember more of the locations it has just visited. It therefore has an increasing awareness of its past, which has an impact on the decisions it makes going forwards.
As more of the snakes' histories are revealed, patterns begin to emerge - like a picture of society, showing regions where many snakes have been, and others where none have ventured. Individual movements become hidden within a shifting cloud of interconnected pasts.
After a certain point, the snakes' freedom becomes guided not only by their previous decisions, but also by external influences that set out which future paths are available to them. Increasingly intricate zones dictate the routes snakes must take to reach each other, and it is only through head-on collisions, by crossing paths, that the snakes are able to progress through the piece.
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Creative Team:
Lewis Sykes – Creative Technologist and Mentor
Edward Crane – Mathematician
Jack Stiling – Fabricator (Framing)
Financial Support:
Arts Council England
Ginkgo Projects
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Exhibitions:
APERIODIC, Kit Form Gallery, Bristol (2024)
First Friday 'Other Minds', Watershed, Bristol (2024)
