Life Forms
Creative Coding

Commissioned by the New Forms Festival

Original project: 2013
Re-created in 2021

Life Forms is an interactive & audio-responsive visual system derived from simple artificial life forms. Employing a generative approach (noise and force field), Life Forms recognizes, records, and processes the gestural / bodily movements of the performers and environmental sounds, and further translates such dynamics into forms and motion.

Visual System
The original Life Forms project was commissioned by the New Forms Festival in 2013 as a live visual system that would later enrich the series of music performances on the festival. While the earlier visual planning of this work made reference to the visual identity of the NFF '13 festival, this project has been restored and update in 2021 to follow its previous trajectory and to explore new aesthetic possibilities.

Control panel



Excerpt 01
Primitives


Excerpt 02
Rythms


Excerpt 03
Flow


Excerpt 04
Waves


Excerpt 05
Electrics

The Virtual Shadow
When connected to a depth camera, the artificial life system could “perceive” the person nearby, and then direct the simple life forms within it to form a virtual shadow of the person.

During the performances at the New Forms Festival, the musicians engaged such virtual shadows into their live sets—these  shadows then functioned as extensions of both the musicians’ physical bodies and their musical performances. 
Installation Set-up


Still Sequence 01


Still Sequence 02



Info
New Forms Media Society is a non-profit society and media arts organization founded in 2000 that nurtures and connects local and international arts, science and grassroots communities through the annual New Forms Festival. By promoting Canadian Artists in collaboration with the international arts and technology world, the NFF facilitates multimodal art works and engages in discussion on their role in our cultural environment. Since its inception, an integral element of the NFF is the recognition of independent and groundbreaking artists; the NFF aims to showcase and increase awareness of these artists and their work within our community and beyond by promoting them within a larger milieu. (link: New Forms Festival).

Visual identity of NFF '13 (Post Projects 2013)



© 2022 Chao Feng