First shown at the Digital Revolution exhibition at the Barbican, London, Together is a collaboration between Universal Everything and the audience. It brings together two fundamental parts of the studio’s process – drawing and rule-based creation – to explore the notion that every person conceives a unique response to the same challenge.

A bespoke web app presents the audience with a limited shape and colour palette, encouraging them to create short animated loops in response – as simple as drawing on paper. The minimal toolset enables the audience to duplicate a frame, onion skin, trace over a guide frame, and erase or delete a frame.

The artwork was launched with a collection of animations created by Universal Everything, which, over time, were mixed with audience contributions on a loop, forming an ongoing dialogue between studio and public.

Together continues the studio’s exploration into generative design. As artists, they define the instructional ‘seed’ which ‘grows’ infinite, unpredictable visual variations as participants engage with custom software.

“Instead of machines being programmed to evoke distinctly human characteristics, Universal Everything instructs humans as if they were machines. It is an experiment to test whether code yet again prompts humanity itself to materialise in visual expression.”
– Antonia Lee – read full essay

3 July-14 September 2014, at The Barbican Centre, London
24 October 2014–30 August 2015, at Tekniska Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
19 October 2015-10 January 2016, at Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, Greece
19 February-12 June 2016, at Zorlu Center, Istanbul, Turkey
15 January-May 2018, at WF Central, Beijing, China

Artwork:
Together