Jeremy Hight: Who are some of your influences?
Kim Asendorf: I am mostly interested in ideas and possibilities, the creation of weird concepts that become executed and lead me to something new to feed my own curiosity. The first artists who have really caught my attention were UBERMORGEN.COM. Hans Bernhard did a workshop about 'Lo-Fi Strategies in Media Hacking' at my art school in Kassel. His presentation was so impressing and really opened my eyes. It is art to play with the public media? Yes it is!
Actually I like the term 'Live Stream Art' rather than 'Media Hacking', it is fresh and friendly, innocent as the media itself.
JH: Your work is fascinating in its ability to tie aesthetics and coding into a form of play. What about your process interests you most, as far as the back-end aspects of plays on aesthetics, forms and functionality?
KA: My visual work is based on similar strategies, I am looking for new concepts to create something new. Programming is like the best tool to do so. If you do not just copy all the existing algorithms but develop your own, you can easily surprise yourself and literally discover new aesthetics.
JH: You work with computers as a medium. How do you see your work in relation to the first waves of net art folks like Vuk Ćosić and Jodi?
KA: Computers and the Internet have changed a lot since the first wave, technically and cultural. But I think the biggest difference is the audience. Nowadays much more people are familiar with computers, the Internet and everything. Net Art is less nerdy, actually it can be everything that happens online.
JH: What are your thoughts on the new aesthetic, glitch sub genres and data-moshing?
KA: It is great, our technology led us straight into it. Glitch and Data Moshing are general discoveries and not inventions. The results of these errors were so impressive that tools have been developed to bring the abuse of digital data up to a professional level. That is wonderful.
I am still not into the term 'New Aesthetic'. The base for all the new aesthetic stuff is the limitation of digital tools and computers. It is limited to the functionality of Adobe software, openFrameworks and your graphic card. It is about presets and tutorials. I'd call it 'Default Aesthetic'.
JH: Your work often has a great sense of play and even parody. What most interests you in relation to the net and elements like selfies, memes and social networks?
KA: It really needs to be said: The Internet works very well.
I was always fascinated by cultural trends and the behavior of the people. You can go to a boozing event to learn about social behavior on a local basis, you can travel, you can watch TV, but the Internet is always bigger. You can act there on a huge public stage while you feel completely lonely. I love the concept of having a private life and additionally a public avatar.
JH: What are you working on right now?
KA: Actually I am working a lot with Ole Fach. We are planning some new shows for our online gallery (fa-g.org) and recently founded the art group JUST DO IT.
We are also working on a blog about media strategies, I hope that will launch early 2014.
Check out a selection of images by Kim Asendorf in this issue of Unlikely Stories: Episode IV!
Kim Asendorf is a conceptual artist and works in a large area of media and digital related art. He loves to transport things from the Internet into real life and back. Kim did several net art projects, often based on data taken from the Internet or gathered from other individuals through the Internet. His work is experimental with generative strategies, physical computing, data and glitch. Most of his works leads into installations, sculptures, visualizations and abstract geometric art, but also into applications, animated gifs or noisy sounds. In 2010 he coined the term "pixel sorting", an algorithmic image manipulation process with unique results.
Kim lives and works in Berlin.
Jeremy Hight is the Art Director at Unlikely Stories: Episode IV. You can learn more about him at his bio page.
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