“Luci” reproduces the functioning of a self-organizing system inspired by the behavior of fireflies in the mangroves of Southeast Asia. It has been observed that when the male emits an intermittent signal, the female responds with a similar signal. At first, the emissions tend toward similarity before fully coinciding. This is just one example of what constitutes a general characteristic of nature: the existence of coupled oscillators, systems that tend to stabilize in certain states of periodic sequence as long as sufficiently strong fluctuations do not occur to disrupt the stability of these configurations.

“Luci” consists of 64 units, each composed of 5 transmitters, sensitive to light and sound, whose rhythmic behavior configures countless chaotic patterns that tend toward stability. The individual components have no information about the behavior of the whole, and the behavior of “Luci” is manifestly more complex than that of its components. The alteration of ambient luminosity produced by the visitor’s intervention stimulates communication among the components, provoking a new coupled configuration. Although the polyrhythmic patterns of adaptation are not always the same, and despite the fact that the starting points and trajectories may be essentially different, they always end up in the same place. Luci is proof that the world is full of clocks that tend to coincide, and whose beats generate a sound of universal dimensions that gives us an idea of the order we believe we perceive in nature.

“Luci” is, ultimately, an allusion to the irreversibility of nature and to the absolute certainty of death.