In Flock, a multiplayer online experience, people create clouds of bubbles and interact with them. Simultaneous visitors are paired up to play together - an opportunity to connect with a stranger.

Flock is part of Bimble Space, and can be found here.

People can choose a colour and throw bubbles around the screen simply by dragging their mouse or finger. The bubbles then respond to each other, moving like a flock of birds.

When two people are paired, their bubbles momentarily join together in a connected cloud of movement - until they pop.

While there are no predefined goals or rules to this game, people immediately began to invent their own, finding ways to communicate with their partner by mimicking their movements, drawing symbols like hearts or circling around each other.

The knowledge that another person is seeing your movements and you may be touching the same spots on your phone screens leads to a feeling of connection despite the physical distance. Some pairs held their fingers still in the same spot while bubbles billowed out - a virtual hug.

Technical Information

The animations in Flock are created in p5.js, a library for JavaScript. The communication between participants uses Node.js and socket.io. The site is run on Heroku. The flocking algorithm is inspired by Craig Reynold’s boids.

Flock received around 39k visitors across a few days.