Science + culture + caffeine. I was perusing Seed Magazine this morning over my cup of coffee. There was a brief portfolio highlight on Richard Barnes’ photographs. It’s not a new story, but thought it was still worth posting just because the photos are THAT cool and I love it when art meets science.

At first when you look at the stark black and white images you think they could be vector art or photoshopped compositions. But they’re actually photographs of flocks of starlings flying over the suburbs of Rome. He spent two years capturing their complex flight patterns on film.

The result is beautiful. It’s amazing to see these intricate patterns created not by one bird but by hundreds, all moving like one superorganism. There is no leader, but yet they’re perfectly coordinated. The study of this behavior is the impetus for STARFLAG, a group of ornithologists, physicists, biologist, and economists in Europe who believe it will shed light into the group/herding behaviors in humans. There’s a great article and multimedia piece in last year’s New York Times.