Murmurations

If I had to pick a most beautiful sight in the animal kingdom I would say it has to be a murmuration. In wintertime starlings flock together in their hundreds of thousands, flying in perfect harmony creating an illusion that they are one giant organism rather than a collection of small birds. This behaviour is still not fully explained but scientist think that it is a strategy that protects from predators and the temperature is slightly elevated inside a murmuration, a bonus in the middle of winter.

This beautiful video shows it all -

A 3D Printed Murmuration.

I'm trying to capture the beauty and energy of this phenomenon in a design of a 3D printable lamp. Still a work in progress but very exciting. Again I'm using Grasshopper with a Weaverbird plug-in to model it. I also stumbled on an amazing plug-in for Grasshopper call Quelea which is an 'agent based modelling' engine that ran a clever little flocking bird algorithm, total fluke discovery just on the day I needed it!

I'm not entirely sure how it will work as a light source but as with my lamps designs so far, I find myself not worrying about that small detail! See below for the progress made so far...

Front

Rear View