Memento Vivere
Client
National Gallery of Victoria
Location
Victoria, Australia Madrid, Spain
Year
2024
Overview
Memento Vivere was created for the National Gallery of Victoria - Mycocosm Exhibition at Melbourne Design Week 2024, representing the University of the Arts London. The project explores the Anthropocene - the idea that nature will outlast humanity, continuing to grow and decay long after we are gone.
Produced in collaboration with Dr. Keir Williams, the work takes the form of a UHD digital video tryptic displayed across three portrait screens. Each screen shows a granite bust being gradually consumed by moss, lichen, and fungi over the course of an hour, then reversing on a continuous loop.
The Brief
The exhibition brief asked contributors to respond to themes of natural systems, growth, and decay using digital design. The format required four synchronised UHD portrait videos running as a seamless two-hour loop, suitable for gallery installation.
The core challenge was representing organic biological growth convincingly through 3D alone, without physical materials or live footage. The work needed to hold attention across an extended loop and read clearly in a large-scale gallery context.
Development
The busts were modelled in Blender. Achieving convincing moss, lichen, and fungi growth required building a procedural system using geometry nodes rather than hand-placing elements, which allowed me to simulate the unpredictability of nature.
The geometry node network grew to over 400 nodes, controlling growth distribution, density, variation, and organic irregularity. Weeks of research into mycology informed how fungi actually spreads across surfaces, which shaped the system's logic rather than just its appearance.
Iteration was the bulk of the work. Each version tested how the growth behaved at different stages of the animation and how it read at UHD resolution under gallery conditions.
Result
The final output was three synchronised H.265 UHD videos, 4 hour duration at 3840x2160 at 60fps, delivered for display at NGV Melbourne Design Week 2024. The videos ran as a continuous loop across the exhibition period.
The project was selected to represent UAL internationally, and the procedural growth system produced results detailed and varied enough to sustain close viewing over an extended loop without visible repetition.