Simon Hillme: Robinienhof
Interview: Gamze Can. Published on 20th SEP 2024.
Hey Simon, it’s great to have you here as part of the GOLDSTÜCKE program! Congratulations once again on winning the Open Call. We’re thrilled to learn more about your artistic practice and hear your insights on the creative journey that brought you here.
— Are you familiar with Gelsenkirchen and the GOLDSTÜCKE? What motivated you to apply for the Open Call?
I hadn’t had any prior contact with Gelsenkirchen before now. I only became aware of the “GOLDSTÜCKE” through the open call. What attracted me to the call was its thematic direction and the great freedom regarding possible submissions.
— How would you describe your artistic practice?
I primarily work with time-based media, especially sound and light (video), with most of my works being non-representational. My projects include video projections, installation works, audiovisual performances, and sound designs, often in collaborative contexts. I mainly use computer-based technologies, such as node-based development tools, real-time 3D engines, as well as modular audio and video programs. My ideas and concepts often stem from questions in social theory and the humanities. From these core thoughts, I develop a content-based narrative, a visual language, and a compositional structure, which I then realize audiovisually through abstract approaches and analogies.
— What materials or technologies do you use in your work?
The visual elements of my work consist mainly of three-dimensional point clouds and mesh structures, whose algorithm-based data sets are procedurally transformed. This creates a visual structure that constantly changes dynamically. The acoustic part of the composition is based on audio material developed through the recursive application of phase modulations and feedback, arranged into rhythmic compositions.
— How did you come to this approach? What are the particularly interesting aspects of the material/medium? Which processes and methods are central for you?
Feedback and recursive processes play a crucial role in my work. By recursively connecting data streams and signal processors, it becomes possible to create dynamic structures that, in a sense, generate and evolve autopoietically – and you can influence their development. This allows for a kind of dialogical relationship with the work, where you interact with it in a back-and-forth process of action and reaction as it simultaneously reshapes itself. You develop heuristics, so to speak, for dealing with your own work, which I find exciting.
I originally came across this way of working while developing drone sounds through modular sound synthesis. Around the same time, I started experimenting with the feedback of video signals. At some point, I realized that in a digital environment, you can fundamentally feed back any data stream – whether it be an audio wave, a raster graphic, or the position data and textures of 3D objects.
— Which aspects were particularly important to you in the creation of your artwork?
A central aspect was finding the balance between processual elements and the conscious structuring of the material. I also wanted to strike a balance between the organic and the digital, to develop a composition that is based on a digitally synthetic visual language but, in its structure, shows a distinctly organic character and, over time, undergoes developmental and transformation processes that further shape this character.
— What core idea inspired your current work, and what message do you want to convey?
My work deals with the ambivalence between community and the individual, between inside and outside. As a society, we are in a phase of transition where old structures are disintegrating, but new ones are not yet tangible. The philosopher Zygmunt Bauman described the state of our present as “liquid modernity.” I reflect on these uncertainties and the general handling of ambiguities in my work.
— Do you have a favorite artwork from this year’s GOLDSTÜCKE program?
Since I haven’t yet seen the works in person, it’s difficult for me to answer that. However, RAYARRAY by Simon Lang and Lucca Vitters looks very interesting.