The point of departure of Allegiance to Instinct of Staying with Flock vs. Commitment to Individually Desired Path is a found image of a flock of flamingos in flight. Using charcoal dust and a network of taught threads, I create an image of the grid in the negative, essentially the absence of the grid, or a smoky reminder of rigorous, rational thought. In lieu of illustrating each flamingo, I represent the birds with graphite lines where they would overlap with the grid, as if reality can only be seen through the thin white lines of the grid network.
The general direction of a group of animals is determined by the reconciliation of two variables by each individual, namely, the level of allegiance to the group and the degree of commitment to one’s own path.
By determining the vertical dimension of the drawing to represent an increase in the former variable, and the horizontal dimension to represent an increase in the later, I transform the drawing into a Cartesian coordinate system. The light gray squares represent the median number of birds in each column and the dark grey squares lie closest to the “line of best fit”, a statistical tool that expresses the relationship between two variables.