swarms\/\/composed of millions

"Birds" by Shu Okada. Visit her site at www.shuokada.com

God I love a good animal swarm. A shoal. Huge teeming masses of living things moving together as one. Pulsating erratically. What awesome power. What capability. What sheer animal instinct.  Probably a little bit of stupidity too. I also like the word pullulate. Never has a word you probably haven’t heard before meant so much.

pul·lu·late (ply-lt) intr.v. pul·lu·lat·ed, pul·lu·lat·ing, pul·lu·lates 1) To put forth sprouts or buds; germinate. 2) To breed rapidly or abundantly. 3) To teem; swarm: i.e. a lagoon that pullulated with tropical fish.

So by my count that word means: to grow, to fuck real fast, and, yep, to SWARM. Awesome. The most versatile word ever.

It also rhymes with ululate (ly-lt, yl-) intr.v. To howl, wail, or lament loudly. The ululating pullulating masses of birds. Howling, wailing, lamenting, growing, fucking real fast and SWARMING birds.

What a truly alive swirl of squawks and bird poo. The layered sounds of the bird calls must be immense. How fascinating the collective is when it acts together. People do this. They move next to each other, not knowing why yet going with the flow. It’s common unintelligence or a mutual agreement without clearly setting the goal. In and out of the subway. Past the crowded restaurant. For love of god. For revolution. Swarming is a natural problem solver. Defense is achieved through multitude. Cicadas. Offense as well. Piranhas. Strength in numbers on both sides of the ball.

I call shenanigans on the number 300,000 in that video. Who is guessing that number? Really? Remember the jar full of jelly beans in grade school? Everyone took a stab at figuring the amount inside. I feel like that number was around 175 and NO ONE could do it. But we’re ok with some joker in Denmark with a youtube account just throwing around the number 300,000? I’m not. Not ok with it. Looks more like 450K to me.

But, how can we utilize swarming in art? I once wrote a little piece (for an ill-fated publication I hope will one day rise again) about a shoal of fish off the coast of Miami. It was the enforcer of Biscayne Bay. The Tequesta worshipped it. An uncatchable school of fish, swarming through the Gulf Stream. No one knew the species, or the size, or if the fish were gods or demons. There was talk that they helped people, and talk that they dragged others below the waves. I was using a shoal of fish as a literary device. Swarming itself to signify power as well as the unknown. With many faces unseen yet still forming as one, much like Shu Okada’s drawing above. Here she has used many birds to form one.

Pixar knows how useful a swarm can truly be.

And how much fun are animal collective nouns! A pride of lions. A congress of baboons. Army of ants. Murder of crows. CRASH OF RHINOS! I could do this forever. It’s one of my favorite things about the English language. Lets make one up. A decrepitude of ringworm. Or. A fistpump of douchebags. Zing! We have a winner.

Now besides writing or drawing, how can we truly further explore swarming in art? We need to protect ourselves. Us. The art minded. Defense corporations and evil top secret government types are DEFINITELY using swarming to build weapons. “Swarming nano-bots” is already the subject of a Michael Crichton novel which means you know there’s an defense agency set up specifically to defend it AS WELL AS an intelligence one to experiment with it in a sparsely populated area of the Northern Andes Mountains. We’re screwed. We must experiment.

Think of your own swarm game! Here’s a suggestion. Put 500 unrelated people all wearing the same clothes in a room with a (not dangerously) smaller capacity than that. No sitting. Give them the same musical instrument. I vote for the recorder, since its easy enough anyone can play it. Videotape the results. See how they interact.

Any other ideas?

Go Forth. Form a collective. Or return to back here and be with us. But remember, a swarm can always suffer the worst fate.

Possible the most awesome nature video moment I’ve ever witnessed. Solid bait ball action. God I wish my life was narrated by David Attenborough.

Tune in next week for a quaint little trip to the symphony. We can call it a date. While you wait with bated genitalia, become fan of Chicken Flava on Facebook.

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Tags: animal collective nouns, bait ball, composed before a million universes, michael crichton, okada shu, swarming