As the music industry continues to dwindle into a sea of mediocrity and despair, established groups are struggling to find new ways in which to interact and 'connect' with their audience. Oxford alt-rock heroes Radiohead are the latest to join the digital bandwagon with their 'PolyFauna' app, which has been designed in tandem with the UK-based digital art design studio Universal Everything.
The app uses the visual identity honed by constant artistic director Stanley Donwood and frontman Thom Yorke (under his 'Dr Tchock' pseudonym) during the promotion cycle of the band's last album 'The King Of Limbs' to reflect an eerie but beautiful “Evolving world”. Universal Everything have created a bespoke piece of software for the band and their fans, which explores an exploration of the images and ideas behind the ethereal opening track 'Bloom' from that album.
The goal is simple enough, you simply follow the red dot through a multi-coloured forest via your devices in-built gyroscope. The app itself however, is a far more complicated and obtuse creation than your typical app based 'mini game'. Yorke himself gives the instructions for the app, telling users to use their screens as a “Window into an evolving world” and the first person perspective really helps absorb users into this strange, ever shifting dreamscape.
The musical app follows in the footsteps of artists such as Tinie Tempah and Lady Gaga and is quite similar in execution to the 'Biophilia' app launched by Bjork last year, in that it uses abstract, biological themes gleamed from the bands interest in “Early computer life-experiments and the imagined creatures of our subconscious” in order to fully express the true nature of the music it represents. Indeed, as the band are admitted fans of the Icelandic avant-garde songstress (Yorke even duetted with her on the soundtrack to her 2004 film 'Dancer in the Dark'), the influence is rather difficult to ignore.
Universal Everything seem like a natural fit for the legendary alternative rock five piece. The company was founded in 2004 by Matt Pyke and Pyke is well known in the industry for exhibiting strange and beautiful shapes and sounds in his works, large scale pieces that have been commissioned by everyone from MTV to Hyundai. Pyke has said of the app that it strives to establish a “Deeper interaction with the environment through touch”, which the user does by bringing life to the world via drawing disparate shapes (or 'creatures') into it with simple finger strokes.
The game was constructed using the 'Unity Engine' and was programmed in C#. FMOD with complicated filters, spacial positioning algorithms, shaders and bizarre doppler effects. The result is an experience that is pure Radiohead and pure Universal Everything. A true meeting of the minds.
PolyFauna is out now for free via both the Google Play Store and the iOS AppStore
Official Universal Everything Site
Official Radiohead Site
Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance copywriter and massive Radiohead fan (Kid A is his favourite album) who has spent the last 30 minutes of his life completely entranced (and mildly disturbed) by PolyFauna.
