Lifeforms was an exhibition held at 180 Strand, showcasing the works of Universal Everything, a media art and design collective that was founded in 2004 by Matt Pyke. I have known the work of Universal Everything for quite a while. My knowledge of them was that they created organic-like procedural 3D animations, which process I have always wanted to learn. In this Lifeforms exhibition, 14 projects are being shown. Several of those projects were interactive projects, which are a great sensory experience for the visitor, combined with the element of sound and audio of each project.
Quoting from the 180 Strand website:
“The lifeforms are often made with generative software. “It’s compelling and surprising because it’s always fresh. It’s off doing its own thing and evolves beyond what we create in the studio.” What’s interesting is how we project meaning and personality onto Universal Everything’s work. They design their own computational systems to grow characters, plants or abstract lifeforms – the personalities emerge by themselves.”
I remember watching Matt Pyke’s interview, in which he mentioned something about how we can breathe a soul into objects by applying the concept of anthropomorphism. It could be as simple as giving them eyes or legs, even mimicking the living being. And by visiting this exhibition, it made sense to me how this concept applied to their creations. I love how they gave organic movement and performance to those alien objects and brought to us, the audience, a sense of familiarity. This then results in us rationalising those objects as something that is known dearly to us, such as humans, plants, creatures, microbes, etc.