Origins

Max Cooper

creative agencies Rabbit Hole and Blackbox mixed oily magnetic fluids with water to create an abstract representation of primordial life in this music video for UK producer Max Cooper. The video was created using ferrofluids – tiny magnetic particles suspended in liquid – which director Tim Dee and his team at Rabbit Hole, together with Blackbox, added to a small tank of water and manipulated using magnets. “We used two types of ferrofluid,” Dee told Dezeen. “One floated and the other sank creating this alien landscape. Magnets of different strengths were used to push and draw the ferrofluid causing it to connect and disrupt the environment.” Because the oil-based ferrofluid wouldn’t mix with the water in the tank, the force of the magnets caused small droplets to form, replicating how the very first biological cells could have evolved.

“Spheres form of one fluid inside the other” Max Cooper explained. “[These are] basic cell-like structures. All living cells today exhibit this same natural property and it’s possible that the first cells arose through the sorts of processes shown in the video.”

Origins is part of a larger project by Cooper called Emergence, a live audio-visual performance that represents various stages of life, from its early beginnings to human existence today.