Radiohead release PolyFauna, a free app grown from “Bloom”

Radiohead have released PolyFauna, a free app for iOS and Android made with Universal Everything, a British digital arts studio. Thom Yorke announced it on the band's website as an experimental collaboration that grew out of the King of Limbs sessions, built on the imagery and sounds of “Bloom”.

It comes from an interest in early computer life-experiments and the imagined creatures of our subconscious.

Thom Yorke⁴

Moving the phone steers a first-person flight through scenery that grows more random. Tapping or drawing on the screen makes shapes and creatures that fly off into the scene, and catching up with a flashing red dot carries the flight on somewhere new. The store listing credits Radiohead, Nigel Godrich, Stanley Donwood and Universal Everything.

Yorke's post ends with four short instructions. The screen is a window into an evolving world, move around to look around, follow the red dot, wear headphones. The app's description in the store adds a fifth. You can get some pretty strange looks on the train.¹

PolyFauna, the Radiohead app, launch film, February 2014· Universal Everythingwatch on youtube →