Unconfined - Samsung S8 Launch at Milan Design Week 2017

Interactive installation by Universal Everything and Zaha Hadid Architects, commissioned by Samsung.

Presented at Milan Design Week 2017 to accompany the launch of the Galaxy S8 phone.

So I’ve been a massive fan of Universal Everything’s work ever since Matt Pyke formed the studio post-Designers Republic, so being invited to join them as a developer on this adventure was a bit exciting, to say the least!

The brief was to produce a real-time, interactive artwork that would be projected onto seven monumental ‘petals’, designed and inhabiting a space by Zaha Hadid Architects, within a relatively short timeframe – and with a lot of press attention on the final result, so no small order.

With a tight timeline, the lead developer Chris Mullany and I developed a system for simulating choreographed bird-like motion onto thousands of unique ‘avatars’ – playful, generative striped characters who would fly and dance around the space.

We worked rapidly in Unity, with Chris handling the creation and rendering of the Avatars, and me handling the flocking motion and choreographies that would play in synchronicity with composed music from Simon Pyke / Freefarm.

The final setup in Milan required an impressive assortment of hardware, handled by an amazing crew of projectionists, d3 operators, sound and lighting designers, and our playback rig – 6 high-end PCs running Unity apps, all synchronised via network from a single server, from which I could adjust and refine all aspects of the show once we arrived in Milan.