FutureDeluxe Designs Real-Time Generative Universe as Art Installation

Global creative studio FutureDeluxe has created a privately commissioned real-time generative artwork to simulate views of an unknown universe as its latest installation. The work is designed to display an ambient and ever-changing cinematic model of the cosmos where viewers glimpse a one-off moment in each encounter. 

Titled ‘Poiesis’, an ancient Greek word for bringing something into being that didn’t exist before, the brief was to create a window into another universe and experience an ever-changing view of unknown planets and solar systems never seen before, and never seen again. The work creates journeys through space, travelling from far out wide to being right on the surface of each planet’s terrain. 

The artwork generates upwards of 2,147,483,648 possible unique cinematic journeys showing views of space from nebula to landscape. In order to see all of the possible combinations, a viewer would need 122,491.987 human years.

Engineering and systematic design are stars of the show for Poiesis. As in nature, complexity and emergent properties arise when a number of simpler building blocks interact with each other and their environment. This is how life takes shape with staggering complexity . 

To create the universe the team behind the project replicated this principle of Emergence by first distilling the universe down to a number of its most fundamental parts, a set of basic building blocks, which, when combined together algorithmically in Unreal Engine, to create complex and surprising systems.

Svet Lapcheva, EP, says of the work, “The universe as we know it is more expansive, more diverse and more infinite than anything else we can imagine. So it was quite an extreme challenge to our team to consider how to reimagine it as a generative artwork. It was a true collaboration between artist and algorithms, designing beautiful planets and cosmic systems at varying scales, setting a vast number of rules and systems, and then allowing the artwork to create planets and journeys generativity in ways we couldn’t imagine.”

Andrew Jones, founder and CCO of FutureDeluxe says, “Pushing the boundaries of possibility, by experimenting with emerging technology and visual aesthetics has always been fundamental to our practice at FutureDeluxe. It’s been unbelievably exciting to have had this opportunity to explore the boundaries of real-time generative art pieces.”