Camera zoom and tracking were added digitally. The video was created using ferrofluids — tiny magnetic particles suspended in liquid — which director Tim Dee and his team at Rabbit Hole added to a small tank of water and manipulated using magnets. «[These are] basic cell-like structures. «We’d seen a few videos using ferrofluid that interested us, but most of the videos we’d seen gave us a science class feeling,» Dee said. «One floated and the other sank creating this alien landscape. «But when I saw the first tests of Rabbit Hole’s ferrofluid work I realised that we were looking at something fundamental – how natural materials and forces can produce the first sorts of structures needed to initiate early life.»
The final video features up to three shots at the same time, which Dee rotated and stitched together to create different varieties of movement. «We wanted to see if we could use it in a more creative way and possibly tell a story.»
The numbers next to each droplet represent the complexity of the organisms as different cells combine throughout the video. «The numbers signify that change. The more complex the life form the higher the number.» Related story: Max Cooper’s music video for Seething emulates biological cell growth
«I wasn’t sure how to approach the origins of life section,» Cooper said. «We used two types of ferrofluid,» Dee told Dezeen.
