Henrik Soederstroem

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA

Artist statement

My work engages with systems of communication and meaning-making, through digital media art, spatial and sculptural installation, and experimental sound. I’ve always been interested in the tensions between language and object, fiction and truth, reality and illusion. I frequently explore themes of virtuality and reality, working with 3D graphics, artificial intelligence / artificial life, simulation, generative programming and investigations into digital & online culture. These tensions relate to processes of assigning meaning, which I also explore through the grammar of objects and spaces. Much of my spatial work combines digital and material pieces, contrasting and extending their meaning-making across both the virtual and physical realms. These works are often realized as immersive multi-media installations incorporating sound, video and objects. Aesthetically, my work draws on the poetics and aesthetics of horror, esotericism and spirituality, underground subculture, uncanniness and eeriness. These themes inform obscure and speculative meaning-making processes, alternatives to rigid binary or textual logic. My work in computer graphics and simulation employs a deliberately austere and minimalist aesthetic, challenging economic growth narratives built into digital media technologies. The imperative towards higher resolutions, more spectacular aesthetics and more processing power has a material, social and ecological dimension that I believe media artists need to...

Artwork

• Dunya (channel 2), 2021. Custom software
• Dunya (channel 1), 2021. Custom software
• Dunya, 2021. Custom software, PLA 3D print, concrete
• Dreams in the Mary Kay, 2022. Custom interactive software, Microsoft Kinect sensor
• Dreams in the Mary Kay, 2022. Wood, wire, glass, ceramics, paper, found objects, whiskey
• never 2 late, 2021. Concrete, cassette player, looping cassette tape, deconstructed speaker
• 2 sad 2 tell u, 2021. 3D animation, sound
• Troubles of Presence I-IV, 2023. Generative video software in four parts, 3D models, found objects (paper, wood, vinyl), photographs.
• Troubles of Presence I-IV, 2023. Generative video software in four parts, 3D models, found objects (paper, wood, vinyl), photographs.
• for a self returning mostly memory, 2022. 3D animation
• for a self returning mostly memory, 2022. Projection, vellum paper screen, cassette recorder, looping cassette tape, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Vintage Books, 2015)