The viewer walks into an otherwise dark room and is confronted with a glowing table on which appear bacteria like creatures. Although the images are being fed from a BluRay disc, the table appears to the audience as a giant Petri dish. The physical borders of the table are the borders of the alien environment adding to the illusion of a lab experiment or simulator (as opposed to a traditional projection carrying filmic connotations). Many viewers wanted to touch the table to see if the 'creatures' were being produced from within its surface.

Despite this 'lab' environment, the film itself is deeply immersive, almost musical. The images are 3d renders, with shapes, colours and movement determined by my artificial life simulator (inspired by Thomas Ray's ‘Tierra’). The simulator consists of over 1000 cells and each cell glows, changes colour and visibly shoots information to neighboring cells throughout the film. This projection appeals directly to the senses, to one’s experience of light, colour, movement and musical form. As a Darwinist, I believe that these 'experiences' are embedded deeply in our evolutionary past, they are vital tools in our understanding of our reality and any attempt to understand counter intuitive notions (such as emergent design, evolutionary timescales e.t.c) must attempt to 're-enfranchise' these senses.

The monitor on the wall shows the same artificial life simulator running exactly the same simulation (i.e. when a cell moves on the table the same cell is moving on the screen) however it shows this simulation from a very different perspective. The monitor's film is tracking the system from a roving camera, without colour, but showing more of the outputted data from each cell. This film is showing the 'bones' of the system, its data. The audience see's a wireframe 'monitoring' of the scene he sees unfolding on the table in front of him. This film is less sensually appealing, less hypnotic, but more intellectually revealing.

Ultimately, it is the position of the viewer which is important, between these two conflicting yet synchronized aesthetics. He/she is able to see a seemingly vastly complicated, conditional control/data based simulation represented as an elegant, even beautiful life form and this is the position I take regarding reality. Not to say that beauty can be represented ONLY as data, but rather to show new and fascinating truths underlying our sensual experiences.