  We study experimentally the paths of an assembly of cracks growing in
interaction in a heterogeneous two-dimensional elastic brittle material
submitted to uniaxial stress. For a given initial crack assembly geometry, we
observe two types of crack path. The first one corresponds to a repulsion
followed by an attraction on one end of the crack and a tip to tip attraction
on the other end. The second one corresponds to a pure attraction. Only one of
the crack path type is observed in a given sample. Thus, selection between the
two types appears as a statistical collective process.
