Art Is Not Meant To Be Explained, But Felt
Ben Heim doesn’t just want his art to be hung on a wall. He wants it to transport his audience out of reality by engaging multiple senses and creating immersive experiences.
In an interview for Maureen Seaberg’s book “Tasting The Universe”, Billy Joel described synesthesia as a process where, depending on the type of melody he would listen to, different colors would pop into his head with no reason.
"When I think of different types of melodies which are slower or softer, I think in terms of blues or greens. When I see a particularly vivid color, it's usually a strong melodic, strong rhythmic pattern that emerges at the same time. When I think of these songs, I think of vivid reds, oranges, or golds."
Joel’s words were the first thing that came to my mind when I saw Ben Heim’s artworks for the first time. Born and raised in Australia but currently based in New York City, Ben is a composer and digital artist whose work explores and merges contemporary classical music, virtual reality, audiovisual installations, and live immersive experiences that transport the audience to another world through a sensory overload.
Like most immersive art, I think Ben Heim’s work is not meant to be explained, just felt.
Georgina: How were your beginnings as an audiovisual artist and composer? Did the development of these practices happen at the same time or did one come before the other?
Ben: One actually grew out of the other. I started out as a composer, doing mostly contemporary classical and electronic music and I was producing these immersive music events in Australia and London. They were this kind of large-scale ambient affairs in unique venues such as cathedrals and underground reservoirs with surround sound and live performers. I began getting more interested in incorporating real-time visuals into these events after a performance in a cathedral in Brisbane where we projected footage onto the huge vaulted roof as part of the performance. Research into how I could connect visuals to the music I was making led me to Touchdesigner (the software I use) and the world of generative real-time video art. I was learning for a long time, and posting my audiovisual explorations on Instagram, and people just came to know me as a visual artist, and I began receiving commissions for visuals as well. It’s a lot of fun because I get to switch roles a lot, I might go from working on a short film or documentary as a composer to designing visuals for a public art project, to performing live visuals with a jazz trio.
G: I have noticed that classical contemporary music plays a fundamental role in your work. What musicians inspire you the most?
B: Ah! That is a difficult question. I listen very broadly, I love classical music, as well as more contemporary alternative electronic music like stuff by Trent Reznor, Rival Consoles, Tim Hecker, Ben Frost and Four Tet. I’m also a huge Kanye West fan, love the way he throws himself into art, stage design, fashion and of course insanely well-produced music. My other big love is Frank Ocean, his songwriting, poetic lyrics and aesthetic are so great.
G: In Horizon Studies, displayed at Times Square early this year, we could appreciate some photographs taken by yourself where pixels were scanned horizontally and distorted. Are you a photographer as well?
B: I love photography, and I practice it a lot, but I wouldn’t say I am a photographer. I use photography in my generative art because I find it to be a great way to create textures with lots of detail and variation, but with cohesive color palettes. I take abstract photos of complex scenes then color grade them in Lightroom to achieve a cohesive color palette by adjusting the hues of different colors and tinting different parts of the image. When I feed these images into the generative feedback patches I create in Touchdesigner, they result in highly detailed but visually unified outputs. The interesting thing about Horizon Studies is while I have produced color schemes that are reminiscent of the ocean, deserts, and fires, the pictures were all actually taken in New York City, they’re mostly long exposures of streetlights and traffic.
G: From the concert series Argo in Australia, to Rebounds in Iceland, you have created and curated a large number of immersive experiences in different countries. How do you manage to make the audience interact with your art?
B: Creating interaction between the audience and my art is something I am constantly thinking of and exploring. At a base level it starts with creating immersive experiences that envelop the audience in another world. I don’t want my work to just be something on a wall that the audience looks at, I want it to surround them, engage multiple senses and transport them out of reality. So I use large canvases to display my work, such as the LED façade of the HARPA concert hall in Iceland, or the ceiling of a cathedral, or large LED displays, as well as surround sound to let the audience feel they are inside the artwork. Then there are layers of physical interaction such as the way the audience could interact with Rebounds by spawning new bouncing objects and moving collision elements. Creating interactive art is a dangerous game though, you run the risk of making something that feels more like a video game, or a tech demo than a real work of art.
G: I can’t stop watching the piano improvisations that you posted recently on your Instagram page. They make me feel that we can literally “see” music. How do you think our senses can connect between them through an artistic experience?
B: Yes, I’m very happy with the trajectory of these recent works. I feel like I am getting to a place where the visuals and the music are so intrinsically connected that neither element overshadows the other. This kind of sensory overload is very attractive to me as I feel like it unlocks a door to deeper, more impactful artistic experiences. My goal is to eventually create experiences that hijack all of an audience’s senses and transport them to another state of consciousness where they are able to experience all of the different senses as one all-encompassing conglomeration.
G: How can we appreciate this synesthetic phenomenon through your art?
B: Synesthesia is very interesting to me, and while I don’t experience it myself I feel like I approach many things in a synesthetic way. For example, I use the same artistic principles to create color schemes in my generative art that I do to create harmony in my music. I am actually currently working on new versions of my audiovisual piano improvisations with an incredible pianist called James Francies who has synesthesia. Apart from the pleasure of working with such a next-level talent, it is really eye-opening to explore how he experiences harmony as color and the ways in which we can translate his internal vision while performing to the audience in real-time.
G: What impact do you think that the Covid-19 outbreak will have on the audiovisual and digital arts?
B: Well one benefit is that we have all had a heap of time indoors to work on new art, imagine new ideas, and finish all those projects that have been in the works for so long. I believe there will be a heap of positivity once everything opens up again and people will be wanting to do more and more with the technology we’ve been cooped up with for so long. I’m looking forward to implementing a heap of projects in the real world that I have been developing over this time. I hope this time will solidify how important art is to humanity, and how important it is to get out there and do things, once it is safe for everyone of course.
G: Can you give us some hints about your upcoming projects?
B: Yes! As I already mentioned I am working on new versions of the audiovisual piano project, I actually just did a live stream with James Francies’ trio so stay tuned for that, and when things open up, some live audiovisual concerts of that nature. I am also working on distribution networks for my artworks, so be on the lookout for some limited edition print runs of my works and other such things. Finally, I am also going to be releasing an audiovisual EP, which I am just finishing off the visuals for, and will also be looking to perform that live once things open up.