Two entities pulse in a regular rhythm. If they can “hear” each other, they will eventually fall into sync. We can observe this phenomenon throughout nature and culture—in the sounds of crickets, the lights of fireflies, the cells of your heart, a clapping audience, the lockstep of soldiers, or the chant of a protest. We synchronize into groups, but the process is never entirely complete or stable.
In Synchronizing Uncertainty, Brian House invites visitors into a space populated with hundreds of electronic circuits generating periodic, oscillating signals—each pulses with its own light and synthesized sound. As visitors move through the space they activate the circuits, causing a cascade of rhythms as they negotiate polyrhythmic difference.
Pulse Coupled Oscillation (PCO) is when a group of periodically pulsing individuals can sense each other’s pulses. By slightly adjusting their rate of pulsation in response to their neighbors’, the rhythms of the group synchronize. That slight adjustment must follow a nonlinear equation first described by Mirollo and Strogatz (1990).
Sensors in the circuits respond to humans moving through the space by activating — or disrupting — the individual oscillators and prompting them to try and synchronize into groups. As individuals fall into sync with each other, factions emerge. Individuals at the borders between groups must choose to whom they will listen. This process is entirely bottom-up. Each individual is an independent circuit; nothing is controlling the system as a whole.
While this installation is composed of electronic circuits, it models dynamics seen throughout biological and even simply mechanical systems in nature. It also serves as a rhythmic metaphor for broader human behavior. Sync can have positive connotations—like the way two lovers adapt to each other—in addition to negative ones, such as the groupthink of fascism. Potential lies in the process of coming together.