Ego studios collaborated with Australian producer Ninajirachi to create an experience that conveyed her ideas of Nature 2.0 — humans recreating natural systems and processes — to promote her 2022 mixtape Second Nature.
“A lot of my music is inspired by this idea… of recreating parts and sounds, things that nature does already but inside a computer.”
The concept was to create a rich interactive experience, delivered via a website, to convey these themes while users previewed the mixtape. Nina called on members of her discord community to submit scans from their own backyards, homes, and natural worlds… short videos of trees, plants, flowers, rocks and artifacts, which we converted to 3D objects using photogrammetry technology.
These virtual copies were then added to the game-world…
As users explore the game world it grows in response to the music… starting as a desolate icy landscape that fills with life according to the audio. We created a system to analyse audio in realtime to drive the spawning of elements in the virtual landscape, the kicks corresponding to trees, snares the undergrowth and higher frequencies more delicate flowers and objects.
The world was also smattered with lyric engravings and other discoverables to encourage users to take their time and explore the world.
The final piece of the Second Nature puzzle was to take this virtual world back into the real one using augmented reality. We developed QR scannable street posters that bounced users through to an instagram-filter which acted as a portal to view the virtual second nature world…
