Project brief: Director, code artists, designers and animators partnered with a global ad agency to create vanguard generative art for IBM and its groundbreaking “Smarter Planet” campaign.

Approach: “Baby” incorporates data-driven design collected from a newborn’s vital signs to convey that IBM’s technologies help analyze data to build smarter hospitals. The team built custom code that translates spreadsheets of raw numerical data from a newborn’s respiratory readings, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and temperature into motion paths that move and evolve design elements organically across the image.

“Energy” embraces generative images drawn from sources like windmills, transformers and homes as expressions of data flowing from energy in chaotic yet elegant ways. Cullen directed the three-day live-action shoot in Los Angeles for “Baby” and “Energy,” teaming once again with longtime collaborator, Academy Award-winning director of photography Guillermo Navarro.

Together, the two films embody the spirit of reactive data and technology as they work in harmony to build a smarter planet and to better our lives. Extensive R&D for the campaign included enlisting a medical consultant, developing custom code to process and visualize data, conceiving a workflow for importing camera motion paths, and tracking curves and models to mirror the exact movements of four infants filmed live on set for “Baby.”

Effectiveness: Encompassing “Data Baby” and “Data Energy,” the campaign gives information a personality, accurately expresses the innovative way that IBM gathers and analyzes information, and harnesses it to help find answers to our biggest problems.

Beautiful data visualization that depicts the power of data to provide a higher quality of life. Communicates meaning of brand effectively. Uses real information for story: This is not bullshit. Seamless integration of photography and CGI. Organic. Making something invisible and unsexy into something interesting and beautiful.