Cups no. 2 Glow Sticks no. 2 Crumpled Paper no. 1 Broken Pallet Yarn no. 2 Cheese Balls Glow Sticks no. 1 Post-it Notes no. 2 Thank You Bags no. 1 Garden Hose no. 1 Plates no. 3 Cups no. 2 Post-its no. 1 Marshmallows no. 1 Yarn no. 1 Leave no. 1 Straws no. 2

The study of swarm intelligence is de rigueur these days, as advancements in computation allow for ever more complex studies of seemingly independent elements behaving as groups. To Thomas Jackson, however, swarms are also an ever-changing source of inspiration for his art.

In Emergent Behavior (the attached gallery includes new unpublished images), Jackson coaxes scores of disposable objects like keg cups, cheeseballs, glow sticks and Post-it notes into persuasively organic formations. The vast variety of ways that swarms manifest in the world – in the animal kingdom, robotics, biology – affords Jackson a lot of conceptual material to work with.

“It gives me an ability to find inspiration in a focused way,” he says. “I can look at photographs of schools of fish, or flocks of birds, or data swarms, or microorganisms or whatever and really get ideas from that.”

The concept coalesced for Jackson after working with the first two photos of the series – the first portraying shards of broken wooden palettes conspiring to jump over a city sidewalk, the second a matrix of leaves hovering among the trees in an upstate New York forest.

“I spent a lot of time staring at them and I realized, these are swarms,” he says. “I arrived at my theme a little bit into the project, sort of like the novelist who doesn’t know where his story is going to go – he just starts writing.”

The early experiments were created with digital cloning and stamping, although Jackson says he has since abandoned these methods.

“If I can do it in camera, I should try to do it in camera,” he says. "If I can but I’m not then I’m being lazy, and not being as ambitious and audacious as I could be.”

At the same time, Jackson rejects blanket criticisms of digital post production as any less authentic a form of art than "pure" photography. His taste for improvisationally arranging elements in the field is in fact informed by the compositional freedom he had when tinkering with his photos on the computer. “I don’t think I would have arrived at doing these installations if I hadn’t started out doing them digitally,” he says. “Doing them digitally was sort of figuring out what’s possible, even though I’m doing them in an analog way now.”

Throughout the series, a major struggle was to get crisp shots of lightweight, suspended objects which are subjected to constantly changing wind conditions. He says he accomplished this largely by timing his shoots to coincide with a post-sunset lull in the winds. Over time, the effect of a bit of motion in the photographs became an attractive quality, adding a sense of explosive energy to the swarms. The latest pictures in the series demonstrate Jackon’s experimentation with this new notion.

Some of the objects, like cheezeballs, look surprisingly at home growing out of a tree, reminiscent of the nearly neon lichen that forms among forests in certain parts of the country. Others clash sharply with their environment. “Take Post-it notes,” he says. “To me, they represent workplace drudgery and anxiety, they’re the place where you write down the bills you have to pay and the people you have to call, and you stick them to your computer screen in your beige office or whatever.”

Part of the intent is to neuter these objects of those associations by reversing the role of the natural and the manufactured; the manufactured objects now carve their own paths, free of the contexts with which we normally associate them.

Emergent Behavior wasn't borne of a specific interest in swarms, but through his photography Jackson has come into contact with experts and researchers who have introduced him to new concepts about swarm behavior. Like the swarm thinking evident in human voting patterns, or an idea offered by a Princeton researcher, who described certain insect swarms in which the central scrum consists of males that are surrounded by a diffuse cloud of females that swoop in for a mate. This idea found its way into Glow Stick no. 2, in which the tubes of glowing goo are gendered by their color.

The series continues to morph as both conceptual and environmental elements inform the process of making the photos. After an artist residency in Wyoming introduced an opportunity for sweeping vistas, in contrast to the photos' typically hemmed-in forest environments, Jackson says he's getting more bold about his locations. The wind itself is also shaping the project, which is evolving to feature wind sculptures that directly engage with gusts of air rather than struggling to resist them.

Whatever form they take, Jackson is ready for the next photos of the series to emerge as they see fit. "I don’t know exactly what they are yet," he says. "But I know they’re coming."

All photos: Thomas Jackson