Phosphor

In ‘Phosphor’, he spreads a glow-in-the-dark powder pigment across a three-by-three metre flat screen. Then, using custom software that he wrote himself, Henke uses a sharp laser beam to draw a series of complex lines along the surface. Given the nature of the pigment, the shape lingers for thirty minutes or so, creating an accumulation of glowing lines. ‘This means the painting is much more complex than I could make with a simple laser beam. I draw and the shape stays, but not forever. It's disappearing’, Henke explains. On conceptualising the piece, he explains: ‘I started drawing geometric shapes as usual and, at some point, I realised that this is quite boring to me. I came up with this idea of creating some sort of wedge or mountain range in a computer program that basically sits on this three-square-metre thing. I randomly place a water drop somewhere and then I think: if there's one drop here at this position, what would be the best way for the water to flow downwards?’ The result is something of a virtual island with a big mountain in the middle and water dripping from it. 

A living mathematic world 

Henke likens the work to a fading memory but this analogy is not the point of the piece. ‘I create a world built from defined mathematical rules, and then I let it run. I cannot really foresee how it's going to look tomorrow.’ That’s the point. ‘I try to find a resonance between [having] some vague idea that I, as an individual, have and the tools I could use. Then I try something out and I see what the tools give me back. If the result resonates with me, I continue diving deeper,’ he says. 

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His curiosity about the outcome and acceptance of its randomness are qualities shared by artists and scientists alike. Indeed, Henke grew up hoping to be a physicist, but always believed he was too lazy for that. He has, perhaps, taken an alternate path and found his way there regardless. There are parallels in the way he interprets ‘Phosphor’ and The Big Bang Theory: whether we’re talking about the world that he’s created or the universe itself, the nature of both is dynamic and evolving, rather than fixed and unchanging. He takes a decidedly holistic approach to his outputs and is quick to overturn the idea that art and science are binary disciplines. ‘One underlying topic that occupies my thinking a lot is [that], in our industrialised society, we have been educated to have this strange separation between technology, engineering, and art.’ 

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He becomes impassioned and explains that separating these disciplines is a limiting school of thought. ‘Because we make this artificial separation, we create this seemingly novel, surprising situation when artists work with technology. This is complete nonsense. A grand piano is a machine, a church organ is a multi-timbral synthesiser. And in order to create pigments for drawing, you have to understand chemistry design. So much of what we perceive as art is the result of massive engineering and, on the other side, so much of what we perceive as good engineering is the result of out-of-the-box thinking.’ 

Dissolving the art and science binaries 

To date, everything that Henke’s created and offered the world inhabits this space between art and technology. As a co-creator of cult music production software, Ableton Live, he has created technology that offers infinite music production for the world’s professionals and hobbyists alike. Through his well-established moniker Monolake, he has written and performed music that, at times, uses digital technology to recreate sounds of the natural world. Hailing originally from Munich, he says that in his younger years, ‘it was clear to me that I would do something technical. And then came the arts and the revelation of mine that I could combine art and technology. And then I moved to Berlin and, well...’ he doesn’t finish his sentence but he does trail off chuckling. 

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Henke’s seemingly effortless shift between disciplines is the result of consistently building upon a common theme. ‘I feel that I apply some general concepts that I developed over my career to the things I do and it doesn't really matter if the output is music or graphics or lasers… of course it does matter, but the underlying thought process is often very similar. I'm interested in time, space, and colour. And I am interested in building machines that do stuff for me.’ With those machines he can draw landscapes with laser beams or build complex harmonic progressions. ‘The important thing for me is to learn. Not just a technical type of learning, solving a programming problem, or solving a mathematical problem. But also applying my learnings to other works in the future,’ he explains. 

A new perspective on sound

Never one to be put in a box, ‘Phosphor’ represents the first time that Henke has ever exhibited his work without music or soundtrack. This is why he describes it as one of his more meditative pieces. Henke explains that he had originally set up the piece with a drone ambient soundscape ‘that was slightly informed by the movement of the laser beams, but it was still arbitrary’. He removed it at the suggestion of one of his contemporaries and realised that he’d only included it because he felt he had to. By removing it, Henke realised that he didn’t need to self-identify as ‘the music guy’ all the time. ‘People tell you that you have to act in a certain way because that's how you [usually] act. And even if you don't feel it, you do feel kind of obliged to do it. Then at some point you decide that it’s actually not what you want. When you change things you suddenly feel this freedom. That's how I felt the moment that I turned the amps off.’  

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And yet, without a soundtrack, ‘Phosphor’ successfully explores these concepts of time, space, and composition. As visitors enter the room, they’re invited to gather around the screen that's set on the ground, rather than hung from the wall. From the luminescent pigment that erases on delay, to the arrangement of people in the room, everything in his piece references these concepts and throws back to Henke’s holistic approach to his own work. With every piece, he asks himself: ‘What is the overall experience if people come to this piece, how do they enter the room? What is the first thing they see? How are they moving in space? Where do they leave the room?’ In short, everything is composition. He adds that ‘people create the composition by themselves and they have a lot of degrees of freedom. They can go in one way or the other. But by simply arranging the piece in the space and arranging the doors and all these kinds of things, you create some sort of composition and that is part of the overall experience. Understanding how, for instance, timing plays a role is something that I think about, learn from one piece, then I apply it to another.’ 

At the very least, Henke will describe himself as a guy who builds machines that do things for him. In our chat, he showed glimpses of someone who doesn’t take himself so seriously (his hidden talent is stand-up comedy and bang-on impersonations of people). But his mission to deconstruct our binary categorisations of art and science is serious. ‘I sometimes wish that our society would appreciate more that both artistic creativity and engineering ultimately come from the same source. And this is being creative.’ Whether he’s building luminescent exhibits, producing electronic albums, or changing the way the world makes music, Henke’s medium consistently demonstrates this message.