Swarm

2019
Marine-grade  stainless steel
240 x 140 x 160 cm

Jake Michael Singer‘s artistic practice is concerned with materiality and transformation of found objects and their teleological societal evolution. Swarm represents a hybrid sculpture that merges traditional thatching techniques and emergent behaviour theory.

Emergent behaviour, or murmuration, is a system that does not depend on its individual parts, but on their relationship to one another.  This phenomenon is considered to be the driver of evolution in many types of systems.  Singer uses this principle in the organisation of thousands of steel pieces (within a South African context this material is typically used for security fencing) to create a symbol of transcendence – from fence to flight. This creates a hybrid between the biological notions of collective movement and further cements the representation of “progress” through the collective.