An art work inspired by bioluminescent behaviour of fireflies of Kuala Selangor
more info in Spanish
The team of Josep Maria Fericgla took electroencephalographic registers of shamans that used to ingest psychotropic mixtures based on the well known amazonic liana called Natem, Ayaguashca or Yagué, Banisteriopsis caapi, that contains beta-carbolines acting as IMAO’s. Natem is extensively used in many amazonic cultural contexts. It is tipically blended with other plants that contain other psychoactive principles. My function in that work was to achieve spectral analysis of electroencephalografic registers obtained in that context, by means of neural networks.
Once the work had finished, I wanted take a look at the place where data had been registered. So that, I travelled to Morón de Santiago, where I met for the first time the amazonic rainforest. I became particularly fascinated by fireflies, because they had a very different behaviour than the one I had observed in European fireflies. They were not the same kind of insects. They were moving all the time from a tree to another tree flashing periodically. Was an amazing experience when I met a cloud of periodically flashing and moving fireflies. Apart from sound, this was my most relevant experience in the rainforest.
Some months ago, I went to Kuala Selangor, Malaysia. I saw there that fireflies synchronized, as in Amazony. Anyway, I was strongly surprised when realized that synchronisation involved big groups and, after a while, when darkness was roughly complete, a tree or a pool or groups of trees flashed synchronically. Sometimes, it seemed to me that the whole mangroove had also reached the synchrony. Not only because of some aesthetical matter, but also because of something related with the pure interest in knowledge, this phenomena is able to attract attention to someone that is working with neural networks. Y knew that epilepsy has to see with situations of hypersynchrony in groups of neurones that in a given moment, they start firing together. There is also neural hypersyncronisation in some cases of autism. Hypersinchrony can also be found in some given forms of schizophrenia. I saw at this time relationships with all this, but as musician, the fascination by the songs of insects and other animals had been a constant along all my life. When, well away from city centres, one pays attention in the night and remains quite, thinking on nothing, only beeing aware of world, has to be conscious of sonic synchronies of insects scattered along quite big areas. The same happens with some batrachians. Frogs croaking and songs of some toads also synchronize. This also happens by daylight: cicadas and grasshoppers are some unquestionable representatives.
Periodic flashes of fireflies are similar, but they happen in the domain of electromagnetic signals. When I experienced that for the first time I knew about coupled oscillators theory. Oscillators’ coupling was already described by Huygens. He was aware about the fact that unsynchronized clocks could synchronize under some conditions. This is a frequently used example, but there are many other interesting cases of coupled oscillation. Halley posed to Newton the famous problem of three bodies: how each one of solar, terrestrial and lunar orbits were influenced by the gravity of the other two bodies. Newton had not mathematical tools to calculate the resulting fluctuations. Long time after, at the end of XIX century, the problem of three bodies was partially solved by a mathematician that advanced some aspects of Einstein’s approach of special relativity. He was Henry Poincaré. A very important thing that can be deduced of his approach is that the gravitational system of the three bodies is not easily predictable and very sensitive to initial conditions. Two different states living in some neighbourhood give, from some instant of their history, developments absolutely diverse. The gravitational system of three bodies is chaotic.
And this is just what happens when three fireflies interact together. Each firefly can be considered as an oscillator able to couple to another in its network through luminous signals. Each individual of a species of fireflies is able to synchronize with other individuals belonging to its species. They do that with characteristic frequency and flashing length. Both variables are specific of each species. It can be shown that coupled oscillators, despite of being biologic or not, synchronize when periodicity’s ratio among length of lightening part of period falls in a given rank. If so, for any set of phase states for each individual in the system at the beginning of his history, it will finish in some balanced situation, many times characterized by a simple and equidistant periodic beating. In some cases, the period is more complex. Anyway, a cyclic behaviour will always be shown and, unless ambient conditions change, the system never will lose it. Nevertheless, the paths that the system follows to reach the stability in some pattern, never coincide. They are chaotic, so that, they are not easily predictable and depend on differences between initial phases of oscillators’ beating. Daylight is noise for them. Depending on the stability of luminosity’s level, the flashes show periodicity or not. Anyway, when light is too much intense, fireflies do not perceive flashes coming from others.
For Luci, the experience of that phenomenon is as important as its realisation. Usually, making a piece is a very important part of its creative process. Nevertheless, fascination for things and thoughts that underlie the pieces are also essential. Someday, one becomes aware that oscillators’ coupling is present in insects’ life, but also in the prices in the stock market, in the life of cities, in the women prisons, where some of them synchronize their menstrual periods. It can be seen in cardiac cells, in immunologic response, in activation and inhibition of genes, in atmospheric phenomena… This way I realized that fireflies beating belongs to a very general category of phenomenon: the world is full of clocks and, fascinated by all that decided investigate it by means of building a piece based in this universal constant. So that, someday, I arrived to consider an object able to couple to other similar objects, whenever they are close enough.
The essential core of Luci is an electronic circuit. It has four infrared emitters and four receptors. It has also a green LED to be perceived by humans and a little loudspeaker that produces a click when the circuit produces a voltage peak. The circuit is based in a very famous integrated chip, the 555. It is a clock that reduces its periodicity when voltage increases. When a electronic firefly emits a infrared flash, the neighbour one receives it by means of receptors, that are fototransistors, and increases its internal voltage. Following this increase, its flashing period reduces and, hence, its flashing time moves forward, so that, the first electronic firefly tends also to move forward its flashing time. This is the way that close electronic fireflies tend to couple. It happens very quickly when there are two. Being three or more, signals spread in some chaotic way related to the form of the net. In the case of Luci, I chose the first numbers of Fibonacci’ s series. Three first sets of Fibonacci numbers are used in opposition one to each other. Each set has rows with 8, 5, 3, 2, 1 and 1 elements. This way, the whole structure can be described by the number of elements each row contains: 1,1,2,3,5,8,8,5,3,2,1,1,1,1,2,3,5,8. This can be seen as equivalent to three opposed triangles. It gives the form to the whole piece along its four meters long. The structure forces the electronic fireflies to synchronize in a way an not in another one. Forms in networks determine ways in transmissionsof information. A net can have any form, nevertheless, the inherent communication models between nodes forces emergency of phenomena, epiphenomena. Any element in the network is directly related with the manifestation of this phenomenon. Morphology of the net determines its behaviour. In the case of Luci’s computational alter-ego, Sin nombre y sin memoria, that involves 64 independent agents, with similar behaviour to electronic fireflies in Luci, the topology of the net can be configurated by means of a matrix, which is part of its interface. Nevertheless, this feature is not offered to the visitors and could be matter of future developements od the piece. Anyway, electronic fireflies and computational ones, they does not know anithing about the whole state of the sistem to which they belong.
In many of my works, i feel the form must be directly related to function. One must depend to the other. I am not seeking for any aesthetical given efect. If I reach a definite form, it is always a function of necessity : things are previously given in some way and this initial order produces final results. This electronic fireflies are not only industrial electronic circuits to be arranged side by side in an easy way, but they are mounted in the air, without cards. Electronic parts are very important in the aesthetical final result. Nevertheless, they are there to execute their function in order to produce the phenomena that I am seeking for : chaotic beating patterns that emerge form synchronisation process of the system, giving visual and sonic rythms with a huge and strange complexity.
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