Transforming the Millennium Gallery at the Museum of Sheffield, a new installation by Universal Everything pays homage to Leonardo da Vinci.

The Vehicle of Nature is presented from 19 January to 26 May and is exhibited alongside Leonardo da Vinci: A Life In Drawing which is also on display at the Museum of Sheffield until 5 May.

The installation is a response to a series of drawings which can be seen in A Life In Drawing. Studies of Flowing Water was made by da Vinci between 1510 and 1513. As with much of da Vinci’s work the drawings are known for being far ahead of their time. In this instance the drawings evoke the complexity of fluid movement in ground-breaking ways, communicating the visual patterns and physical properties of water as well as its power over life and death.

The Vehicle of Nature takes this exploration of water’s properties into the 21st Century with digital animation, using cutting edge display technology to study fluid dynamics. Thousands of digital forms collectively flow as one body across the gallery and around boulder-like structures on the floor.



“The extra twist is that as well as being an animated mover of water it also switches to other types of what we call fluid dynamics. Different things flow in the same way as water so we have a crowd of people, wind flowing through a space and also blood cells in the human body. It’s a bit of anatomical Leonardo, a bit of cloud behaviour, and a bit of weather forecasting so it’s science and physics and digital art all combined into one.”

Matt Pyke, Universal Everything, Sheffield Telegraph

Universal Everything have a base in Sheffield and studied local rivers when preparing the installation.

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The Vehicle of Nature can be seen at the Museum of Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery, Arundel Gate, S1 2PP Sheffield, UK until 26 May 2019.