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Social Firefly is an artwork of 50 autonomous light robots, exhibited during Vivid Sydney 2011. The piece is an expression of the uncanny, unexpected patterns that emerge in complex social networks.
The Social Fireflies respond to light from their neighbours. What follows is an organic and spontaneous demonstration of social interaction. Popular fireflies become highly influential, whilst isolated fireflies must work harder to reach their friends. By shining lights on to the fireflies, audience members speak the same language and influence the interaction between community members.
Arup's project team carried out all aspects of the project over an eight week period, developing more than 15 physical prototypes and 20 iterations of the behavioural algorithms used to generate movement.
The fireflies were designed as autonomous individuals with very similar components and behaviour programming. A core aim of the project was to develop an organic emergent behaviour within the individual fireflies and across the community.
Batch fabrication methods allowed Arup to develop the firefly casings and internal components that are a true first of their kind, never seen before this installation. Open source hardware and software platform, Arduino, allowed the rapid development of bespoke electronics components.
Vivid Sydney 2011 is an annual light, music and ideas festival that ran from 27 May until 13 June. Over 400,000 attendees from Sydney, Australia and the rest of the world experienced events around Circular Quay from the Sydney Opera House to The Rocks.
