Swarm Sandbox is an open source application for mobile phones (currently Symbian S60 devices only) that is designed to explore emergent behaviour in swarms of people. It achieves this by allowing any phone with the application installed to become aware of neighbouring Bluetooth devices, and create a flexible and fluid network. When phones are connected or “swarmed” together the user is able to create rules which trigger a given action either locally on each phone, for example flashing and beeping. These rules are triggered by a number of ways; initially by any user in the swarm sending a “pulse” to the rest of the swarm, however changes in the environment will also trigger certain local actions on each handset.

This is part of a final year project for Ben Reynhart studying Digital Art & Technology at University of Plymouth, UK.

http://code.google.com/p/swarm-sandbox/