This collaborative artwork, created by Gwen van Embden, commemorates the 60th anniversary of UCT’s Summer School
and probes questions of resilience and change. A Darwinian representation of the interaction and course selections of
Summer School students, it uses 10 000 readable LED lights, augmented reality, bar coding, tweets and web site activity
to influence algorhythms that manifest as colour, light and pattern. Each light represents seven symbolic Darwin species
which represent faculties and areas of study. What you witness is the gradual process of change which gravitates in a helix
pattern up the column. Summer School students contributed the ‘Darwin finches’ which populate the nest. This addition
itself informs and transforms the visual shape of the artwork.
