Collective Morphology is an interactive installation project from a collaboration with Rama Hoetzlein in 2004. Recent biological investigations reveal that the collective behaviors of social insects such as the construction of nests can result in complex emergent structures. Collective Morphology is a collaborative interactive exhibit which allows visitors to directly experience the biological process of the emergent generation of form.

Human collaboration is often very different from other examples of natural collaboration. Integrated circuits and robots are all examples of complex, collaboratively built systems whose purposes are often known before they are constructed. The constructions of social insects such as the nests of termites, wasps and ants, however, may not have an explicit mental goal but instead result from the localized activities of individual members [Hoffmeyer 1995]. Termites deposit pellets, then build columns, and finally connect these columns with arches - all without any concept of the nest as a whole.. With Collective Morphology, we reveal an aesthetic exhibit which allows participants to explore and create emergent forms directly.

Visitors surround a circular table with an outer illuminated ring. When a hand or arm is extend over the table, an overhead projection displays particles as if they were emitted from the hand. These particles, coming from multiple users anywhere around the table, cause a central spherical form to grow or shrink selectively based on this collective interaction. The form thus evolves and changes over the duration of the exhibit. In this way, we seek to explore how purposeful and playful interaction combine to produce intellectual forms - forms constructed through intelligent collaboration.

Participants enter the exhibition space to find a circular table with an illuminated outer ring. When they reach their arms over the table, particles are emitted from their hands toward the center of the table. Projected from above onto the table, a spherical form gradually grows and changes as the particles reach the center. Visitors soon realize that half of the table causes the form to grow, while interaction on the other half causes it to diminish. As the form slowly tumbles, particles are added and removed at different places on the sphere. Over time, the form records the collective interactions of all participants during the entire exhibition period.

On the most basic level, Collective Morphology is an enjoyable social experience that invites playful interaction. Later, visitors realize that their participation alters the form in direct ways and that these changes are lasting, thus inviting communication to achieve group modifications of the form. Over the period of the exhibit, individual and group interactions are added to the collective changes made by others.