Stigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a different agent. In that way, subsequent actions tend to reinforce and build on each other, leading to the spontaneous emergence of coherent, apparently systematic activity. More on stigmergy here
Stigmergetic projects have the following characteristics, that require both the whole and the 'traces' to be made visible, intelligible and actionable at the collective as well as the individual level, leading to the following requirements:
- Open architecture, asynchrone open research participation
- People come and go and are never in phase.
- Goal is real: Imagine, explore, learn, produce, build.
- Feedback between face to face open space and online interactive repository
- Multimedia content created can be forked, mixed, mashed, merged, reprocessed, curated, republished in multple forms
- Structure is fluid.
- Knowledge and `possibilities for action' are produced ongoingly that need to be kept track of and acted upon.
- People enter through different doors.
- Some need guidance others autonomy, need 'built in' governance and decision making
- A game or 3D interactive possibility 'catalogue'? Visualizing Stigmergy in the making
- In the end there are two products that must be built and evolve: the visualization of the project, and the project itself
Various conceptual inspirations of visualization here: how parts of a whole can see the whole evolve and the relationships between parts in action, where gaps can be identified, needs fulfilled, possibilities explored and impacts vizualized.
It's about 'seing evolution in the making' or seing what you are producing, at work, in its context.