Polyfauna is an experimental collaboration between Radiohead, Nigel Godrich, Stanley Donwood and Universal Everything. The free app was developed and born out of stems from Radiohead’s 2011 album The King Of Limbs and Donwood’s sketchbooks from around that era.
Set to a lunar calendar (based on monthly cycles of the moon’s phases), this mysterious and immersive experience is brought to life through touch and offers a unique set of experiences each time it’s used. Inviting the user into an expansive world of primitive life, weather, sunsets, mountains and forests, Polyfauna comes from an interest in early computer experiments and the imagined creatures of our subconscious. It’s inspired by everything from the atmospheric landscape paintings of Peter Doig and J.M.W. Turner to the computational life forms of Karl Sims.
Polyfauna is regarded as a pioneering collision between digital art and the world of apps, the collaboration sees the creation of abstracted, expanded and exploded versions of audio and visual work by the band. Use of the iPad gyroscope allowed for use of augmented reality, allowing the user to explore vast digital environments from the comfort of their home.