Arshake Universal Everything is a digital design studio or, rather, a global collective of digital artists, designers, animators, musicians and developers, as described on their website.
The studio was founded by Matt Pyke in 2004 with the aim of «bringing life and empathy into digital art rather than keeping its cold, abstract, machine sensibility» (Matt Pyke).
Universal Everything engages in inter-disciplinary research, starting from the organisation of the studio itself which channels professionals from a variety of backgrounds, active in diverse fields, into activities ranging from experiments to collaborations with various groups and organisations – including Apple, Samsung, Zaha Hadid Architects, Radiohead, Sidney Opera House. Using all forms of technology not only to visualise data, but also to make it ‘living’ and liveable through genres, they employ all kinds of professional skills.
Programmers, architects, musicians and choreographers collaborate with the studio, which moves between disciplines and across museum institutions such as MoMa, the Victoria & Albert and the Science Museum, and for-profit organisations, including Chanel, Intel, Nike and Deutsche Bank. Arshake focused on one of their works for its video post section: Transfiguration: An Ever Changing Organic Costume,representing an anthropomorphous walking giant, who continuously changes appearance, embodied in different forms, matter and materials, from fire to cement.
The studio’s work was also exhibited in Rome at the Ex-Dogana in 2017, part of ArtFutura. Digital Creatures (curated by Montxo Algora, Ex Dogana, 29.04.2017 – 10.09.2017). On this occasion, Universal Everything presented the video series Screens of the Future, a series of small windows on the near future, and they are now continuing their experimental research with a series of ‘speculative spaces’. These are imagined spaces where human beings and technology interact, spaces that are developed to perceive and react in real time, inhabited by digital life forms consisting of algorithmic ecosystems brought to life when visitors interact with them. The gaze of the studio, as always, is projected into the future, without ever losing sight of human beings as both a starting and reference point.
Universal Everything
