Since their invention, electronic media have been imagined as constituting their own space or world, separate from our own. Artist Henrik Soederstroem explores this autonomous world through metaphors taken from horror fiction and the supernatural: like a spirit realm, the digital world can’t quite be physically accessed, but through certain kinds of mediation it can be perceived and even exert influence on our world. In Henrik’s art, this conceptual framework is combined with concepts from generative art, artificial life, randomness and simulation to create “haunted” digital works/worlds. This workshop which will start off with a speculative history of parallel digital worlds and beings, from which we will then workshop methods for randomness and generativity in Unity 3D. No prior experience is required for participation, but entry level knowledge of Unity is recommended for the workshop component.

Henrik Soederstroem is an artist from Stockholm, Sweden, currently residing in Los Angeles. He works primarily in mixed-media installation centering around questions of meaning-making, virtuality and reality. His work employs 3D graphics, artificial life, simulation, generative programming, sound art, collage, found and appropriated objects. His work draws on the poetics and aesthetics of horror, esotericism and spirituality, underground subculture, uncanniness and eeriness; speculative meaning-making processes alternate to rigid binary or textual logic.