funky.

Funky drew inspiration from the profound ideas of Ernst Haeckel, a renowned zoologist, naturalist, philosopher, and artist. Haeckel’s philosophy, beautifully encapsulated in the documentary “Proteus” (2004), emphasizes the connection between individual organisms and their evolutionary development. He believed that each era has its own image of the world, reflecting the vision of its time and its creators. For Haeckel, the primary task of a scientist, much like that of an artist, is to depict the world with both the precision of meticulous research and the passionate intensity of a mystic.

Haeckel argued that an artist should integrate the outer world, discovered through science, with the inner world, glimpsed through poetry and art. He was influenced by Goethe’s idea of the unity and wholeness of the universe, asserting that the artist’s imagination possesses a shape-shifting energy capable of reconciling the opposites and healing the divide between man and nature. He envisaged creative imagination as emerging from the depths of an inner sea, invoking the name of “Proteus,” a Greek sea god capable of assuming an infinite variety of forms, to describe this transformative power.

Inspired by Haeckel’s perspectives on art and nature, I decided to create an animation comprising three distinct parts: sea-water, topography-landscape, and forest-greenery. Each segment of the animation was crafted using photogrammetry models of mushrooms and the Touch-Designer software. The animation begins in an abstract manner, with the mushroom scans transformed through parameters in TouchDesigner to exhibit movement, color, and shape changes. Initially, these forms are unrecognizable as mushrooms, seen from extremely close perspectives.

As the animation progresses through the sea-water and topography-landscape sections, the viewer experiences a continuous flow of dynamic, evolving shapes and colors. This transformation mirrors the fluid and multifaceted nature of Proteus, symbolizing the interconnectedness and versatility of natural forms. In the final segment, the forest-greenery, the imagery gradually resolves to reveal the true origin of these forms: mushrooms. This unveiling underscores the concept that the aspects and emotions of nature can be perceived through the lens of fungi, embodying the unity of nature and art. By the end of the animation, the viewer is led to a realization that the entire journey, from abstract to recognizable, has been an exploration of the natural world through the microcosm of mushrooms, referencing Haeckel’s belief in the interconnectedness of all life forms and the integral role of creative imagination.

documentation booklet explaining the whole process starting from photogrammetry to touchdesigner

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