A rare early FormSynth etching created when Latham was a twenty-three year old student at the Royal College of Art. It shows a single tiny sphere in the centre evolving into complex organic structures through incremental sculptural steps. These include the main FormSynth operators “Beak”, “Bulge” and “Stretch Rules” and new organic rules such as “Lizard Extend” in which a long tentacle sprouts from the centre of the 3D form bursting out through the form’s surface. Many of the evolved forms have a ribbed-bone-like and an organic architectural feel and show a strong influence of Tantric Art and Chinese and Japanese Traditional Art.

In this drawing and in all the FormSynth art works, the implication is that the drawing could go on “for ever” by using these simple rules driven by the artist. On the left section we see evolving "pseudo chemical structures” and in the top section are evolving organic architectural forms. The “Lizard Extend” growths seen in this etching will reappear again later in the generative Mutator software works where thousands of tentacles proliferate bursting from the centre of evolving forms resembling sea anemones and strange multi tentacled alien forms.

Ultimately, the Mutator software led to computer forms which could not have been drawn by hand in the FormSynth style due to their complexity, taking the artist in to new alternative three dimensional evolutionary worlds. However, these early hand drawn FormSynth images retain William’s core evolutionary ideas and in parts his quirky humour and are key stepping works in his move from Fine Art to Generative Art in the mid-eighties.