AGREEMENT

Each band is one firefly. Time runs left to right. A mark is a flash.

Every insect is born with its own tempo, and the only thing any of them can do is nudge: a neighbor's flash hurries you if you were running late, holds you back if you were early. Nobody signals. Nobody leads. Nobody can see more than fourteen neighbors down the line.

I built this expecting to watch order arrive slowly across the picture, and it doesn't. Agreement is nearly the first thing that happens — two flashes, and the field has broadly made up its mind. What takes forever is the remainder: the seams between groups that settled on different beats, drifting, folding, now and then swallowing one another. Seven cycles in, it still isn't unanimous. It never will be.

I also learned what happens if a firefly can only ever hurry its neighbors and never wait for them. The field burns continuously and nothing is ever agreed. That version is not shown.

Standing in the field you would see one instant of this. The picture is the thing nobody in it can perceive — and it is still too long to meet at once, so you will have to walk along it.