Inspiration blooms

Dreams are difficult to manifest, but digital artist Edan Kwan is successfully exploring new ways of making them come alive thanks to computer-generated imagery. In his latest project, the Hong Kong native teamed up with Porsche to visualise the creative journey that originally inspired founder Ferry Porsche, and continues to drive those associated with the brand. 

The result is a spectacular short film that sees firing neutrons and a multicoloured array of particles grow, develop and transform until they take tangible form. It was unveiled to the public in January to celebrate 75 years of Porsche sports cars via an immersive presentation using four-storey-high, 360-degree, 8K HD screens at Outernet, London’s new entertainment district.

‘The brief was to explore the nature of the dream as a personal goal,’ explains Kwan, who developed the project alongside the team at his company, Lusion. ‘Porsche is a luxury sports car, but when Ferry Porsche set out to create the first car, his dream had to manifest itself in a new reality because this space literally did not exist.’

‘We began by researching the influences and experiences that inspired Ferry, along with archive photographs and journals, which we fed into an AI program to generate a dynamic set of imagery to represent the human thought process.’

At the film’s climax, we see flowers blooming, representing the moment when an idea emerges and dreams crystallise. These flowers intertwine and eventually form the distinctive flowing silhouette of the very first Porsche – the 356. 

If Ferry Porsche was around today, he’d be delighted to see his vision still very much alive 75 years later, and continuing to inspire others to dream too, in ways far beyond his wildest imagination.