Matthias Dörfelt
Biography
Matthias Dörfelt is a German visual artist based in Los Angeles.
He mainly works in software producing artifacts ranging from drawings, prints, animation, videos and interactive installations to robotics. In his works he often trades control in favour of surprise because he strongly believes in computation as an expressive, playful and humorous tool. Matthias will continue to explore these aspects by infusing technology with flaws, naivety and weirdness. He believes in a media arts practice that favours spontaneity over streamlining and hopes that his works contribute to shaping our relationship to machines in a similar way.
Matthias studied at the Muthesius Kunsthochschule in Kiel and holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California in Los Angeles.
Artistic approach
Continuous Pondering is an infinite computer generated animation of transforming shapes that attempt to settle in a final composition without ever succeeding. It developed from the idea of making the liminal, implied space between adjacent computer generated compositions visible through animation. For each episode the program picks an initial instruction based framework that affects colours, logic and composition. Each item in the scene then tries to find its shape, form and colour over and over, without ever fully settling. Shapes are nested, layered and masked, blurring any existing boundaries between items. The low resolution visually reinforces this idea as every pixel becomes its own clearly defined form that participates in this process, trying to find its place.
