Commissioned by McMillan for Trend Micro, The Art Of Cybersecurity is a series of images, together with a 4K animation born from cybersecurity threat data.

The work features three main components—the threats, represented by black obelisks derived from over 350,000 data points provided by Trend Micro; the system which detects and deals with these threats, represented by an organic, mesh-like structure; and finally, the creativity that is allowed to flow because the threats have been neutralized.

To create an interesting shape to represent the Trend Micro monitoring system, I made use of an algorithm used in security systems called an MD5 hash. Using this system, I took certain industry verticals such as Banking or Media, created an MD5 hash of those verticals, then used that to create a series of numbers which I then used to drive shapes created by employing the 3D software Houdini. Using this system, I could create specific and unique shapes that would in turn drive the flow of imagery.

Each threat relates to a threat metric derived from the data, while the flow patterns of the creativity strands were influenced from metrics in the data as well as the space carved from the form itself.