The Emergent Photography Project

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About The Emergent Photography Project

"An emergent behaviour can appear when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviours as a collective."

The purpose of this group is to catalyze emergence in the creative process through three basic premises--collective input, randomness, and prescribed limitations.

Here is some more explanation:

The basic concept is that threads will be started (about 5 a month) with three "rules." One technical rule, one content rule, and one rule providing a general theme. Any photo posted to the threads must follow all three rules of that thread. Any photo posted to the group pool must meet the criteria of one of the threads (I'm planning on working out a tagging scheme).

Group members suggest rules to be chosen for the threads. Each rule is assigned a number and three rules (one technique, one content, and one theme) are randomly chosen from the list of the user-submitted rules and assigned to a thread.

Threads will be open indefinitely and members can submit one old image from their photo stream that qualifies. Members may also submit unlimited new images (made after the start of the thread) that qualify. The hope is that the threads will part of a system of emergent creativity through the interaction of the user input (suggesting rules), randomness (selection of rules), prescribed limitations (individual creativity working within the rules).

Threads:
TEPP001: Origins, Film, and Architecture.
TEPP002: In your neighborhood, No cropping, and Bright colors.
TEPP003: Anonymity, The natural world, and Long exposure
TEPP004:Creation/destruction, Wrong white balance, and Food.<a
TEPP005:I want to break free, Bokeh, and Writing.<a

Emergence links
Flickr group
MIT's exploring emergence
Wikipedia