Stigmergic accretion

This paper posits a model of generative fabrication in which agent-based models imbue physical material with digital agency. We demonstrate a process in which real-time feedback is developed between industrial robots and multi-agent algorithms to explore the generative potential of the interaction of computational and material agency. This design research represents an inversion of material agency, from which two key concepts have emerged: parallelism, and stigmergic robotics. Rather than encoding material behavior within digital models, physical material takes on digital behaviors through an inversion of material agency. Parallelism describes a hybrid of digital and material behaviors through the closeness of their interaction. Stigmergic robotics collapses design and fabrication processes into a single operation where the robot operates as an extension of the digital agent generating form through a series of design behaviors operating directly on physical material.