HYPHA web tool
Added to the Museum of Data by Kathryn Rogers on Tuesday, October 20, 2020. Museum of Data Collection ID: 551.
Public description: Hypha is an interactive web tool developed by Luke Powell and Jody Hudson-Powell and their team at Pentagram in collaboration with Counterpoint, which enables users to grow and download their own letterforms (and more) by simulating the mycelium growth found in fungi. Characters can be procedurally grown each time they are typed. The system was used to form the 3D-printed exhibition title for ‘Mushrooms: The Art, Design and Future of Fungi’ show at Somerset House, then developed into a web tool, Hypha, which was displayed as an artwork within the show itself and could be used by visitors to grow and explore letterforms within a browser. The web tool became live after the show ended and became accessable online for the public. Letterforms can be downloaded from the live site as .pngs or a 3D mesh.
Materials used: mycelium growth algorithm and laplacian growth algorithm formed 3D mesh, render (pixels)
Credit: Design: Hudson-Powell/ Pentagram. Consultation on growth patterns: Rosie Emery. Growth simulation/ build and development: Counterpoint Studio.
Size: In the show at Somerset House in London, the Hypha exhibit took up a space approx 3mx2mx1m. It was presented on a 34 x 19 inch OLED monitor with an input ipad and desktop computer for processing and internet access. The web tool was hosted on a remote server. Some processing power is required to run Hypha The program file size of Hypha I aim to source from the developers. It is no bigger than an average website. An example exported mesh (.obj) size for 5 letters is around 250M, with a (.png) size of 620K
Creation date: 2020/01/26 00:00:00
Alternate titles: Hyphahypha.com
External link: https://hyphahypha.com/
Tags: 8
