Hundreds of thousands of simple creatures, the noids, wander a dark field. Each one knows only its immediate surroundings and follows a few simple rules: leave a faint scent, and turn toward the strongest one it senses. Out of rules that simple comes the collective intelligence of ant colonies, beehives and slime mold: trails thicken into highways, networks knit and prune themselves, colonies bloom and fade. No one is in charge. The pattern belongs to the crowd. It is an emergent property.

Every few minutes the rules shift, and the swarm reorganizes in front of you: an ant colony becoming a slime mold, a nervous system blooming into coral.

And the swarm can see you. Move, and you push its currents; step in, and it parts around you or pours in to fill your outline; hold still, and you harden into a statue in its midst. Linger long enough and it may paint your face, noid by noid, before it dissolves back into the collective. Standing here, you are not watching the piece. You are part of it.

The piece was made for a wall: an 85-inch HDR screen in a darkened room, large enough that the swarm meets you at the scale of your own body and its brightest trails seem to give off light. A home version runs in your browser at swarm.hive-mind.com, live and never the same twice.