From the outside, the Olympic Village looks like an ephemeral, seasonal creature, appearing regularly once every two years at various locations on earth, branching to form a nexus and eventually spreading and sprawling as it approaches optimum size. It breathes and pulses with the collective consciousness of a few thousand souls, much like how a colonial marine organism undulates and ripples with the tide.

On the inside of the colony, groups of individuals specialise in their niches, interact both within themselves and with other groups from other niches to trade functions, metabolites, ideas. Responding to a cocktail of chemical and environmental cues, they are driven to perform their tasks at the highest levels, to make and break connections, to participate in discourse and intercourse.

The materialisation of the Olympic Village happens for a reason: mass-spawning. Given that the Olympic Village is the only creature of its kind on earth this might not make much sense at first, until one realises that the condensation of individuals into this hub is the only way for the exchange of genetic material (and thus widening of the gene pool) to take place; individuals live largely separate and disparate lives outside of this congregation.

Imagine this community of thousands of athletes ebbing and flowing, tensing and relaxing, over days of intense competition and nights of intense passion. Knowing this arrangement is merely temporary. Imagine the silent sigh of a coral reef as individual polyps pulse in unison and release their gametes into the ocean over those few balmy summer nights…