Mother and the Creatures

A world, an egg, an organism. The constantly shifting surface of this video installation reveals deeper levels of organic activity evoking both celestial worlds and microscopic sea creatures, creating a mystical womb of visions.

Mother

The fifth interactive video work in the series Imagined Future Evolutions which the art group Genetic Moo has been developing since 2004. Their digital creatures combine elements of the human body in sea-life forms and are designed to be both beguiling and unsettling. Webcams and Flash software are used to create real time animations, which respond in a variety of life-like ways to the motion and touch of the audience.

Mother marks a significant development in the series in composition and interaction design. For the first time this work combines both human and sea-life body parts and more directly evokes the group’s interest in the evolutionary links between humans and sea creatures. Now, instead of the tightly coupled action/response of the former works, a much more subtle form of environmental interaction is employed, whereby sound or light levels in the gallery bring about compositional change within the work.

Named after Echidna, the Greek God and ‘mother of all monsters’, Mother was created in attempt to visualise what the progenitor of Genetic Moo’s creatures might look like.

The Creatures

“…it was perfect for that space, it aroused such joyful disgust and playfulness.” Ellie Donney, Art Curator Collision08 on The Sea Squirts

Inspired by evolutionary links between humans and echinoderms, we discovered that starfish evolved to replace their brain with a net of nervous tissue. This encouraged imaginings of a possible future human evolution directed by a desire for pleasure, unencumbered by a reasoning brain.

….

The creatures act as both self-portraits (they are formed from video footage of the artists’ bodies) and as avatars for the audience interaction. They have been displayed in a number of different configurations, and use a number of different sensing technologies. Webcams and Flash software are used to create real time animations, which can both ‘follow’ and ‘lead’ an interaction, providing as rich an engagement as possible. Long term mood parameters further effect the behaviour of the creatures over the course of an entire day adding more variety.

Thematically, the works raise issues of body-identity, genetic mutation & modification, polymorphous perversity & the grotesque. They also touch on techniques from Artificial Life research. The audience is encouraged to consider the nature of the life-forms they are encountering; and at what level they are communicating.

….

The starfish tends to be attracted to the audience unless the audience acts aggressively. The human motion is captured using Eyesweb and both positional and speed data from stroking/waving gestures are used to engage the starfish. Eventually, if happy enough, a kind of dance will follow. The starfish responds favourably to a gentle engagement as prompted by its plaintive sounds. Mood parameters including happiness, dizziness & aggression, create the sense of a developing relationship with the creature. The starfish is composed from female body parts.

The urchin is a complementary piece to the starfish and is composed of male orgams. Set on a smaller intimate scale, it is light fearing, repelled by torch light It prefers to search out dark corners, where, once its energy levels are sufficiently high, will engage in a bioluminescent dance, which may be read as a primitive attempt at courtship through the visual senses. If the audience is too rough the urchin can become damaged, losing limbs, and it becomes unstable but will slowly heal itself. The urchin busies itself tapping out a sequence of pitches.

The sea-squirts are a little colony of rhythmically pulsating creatures, made from tongues and anii, which are attached to a rock. They respond to touch, being back projected onto a very flexible lycra screen. Pushing the sea squirts triggers a muscle spasm and when pressure is applied around the mouth the squirt will shoot out a jet of water. This excites them and they pulsate rapidly. Left alone the creatures will calm back down.

….

Here is a small selection of the Animacules. Again made from body parts these small creatures were inspired by the scientific discoveries of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in the 17th century. He used his home made microscopes to see microrganisms for the first time. Mistakenly he thought he was observing tiny animals and named them ‘animalcules’. Our creatures are simple animating collages of sexual organs which contain references to microorganisms, but also to both faeries and sea life: jellyfish, shrimp and so on. These creatures are attracted to light shone onto a wall by the viewer. They rise from the depths and will clump into small schools given enough attention.

…..

….