Apocalyptic Fashion, Brain-hopping and Black Holes
A compelling combination of experimental fashion, visual absurdity, and a bit of dark humor. For Austrian 3D artist Helmut Breineder, the unexplored plays an important role in the creative process, even when working together with clients.
You are an artist, engaged in commercial projects as well as producing independent works. Many artists are struggling with finding the time and the routine to make place for both of them. How do you make it work?
– Commercial work is still taking up most of the time so far, but usually, I try to create some personal work between the jobs or take some time off after finishing a big project with a good budget. Personal projects often tend to be done much faster, because you can do whatever you want, without any feedback loops, making all the decisions on your own or changing direction whenever something is not working.
To me, it’s very important to frequently develop and express my own ideas through experimentation and also by playing with new tools. This is what mainly keeps me interested and excited about working with animation, and it’s how I get inspired and come up with new ideas. I try to avoid commercial work that doesn’t have a good budget because I think time is better invested in developing your creativity than working on low-paid jobs.
What’s the best and the worst reaction to your work that you’ve received?
– A project that I have worked on, in collaboration with Accidental Cutting for the London fashion week, called Apocalypse got reposted on a conspiracy theory account, loaded with crazy ideas and a substantial amount of followers. If I remember correctly it said that we (the fashion designer, the London fashion week, me, or whoever) are preparing the Apocalypse. That caused a stream of weird comments for a couple of days, which I deleted because it was incredible nonsense. So, to some conspiracy theorists out there, sorry to disappoint you, I am not working on the apocalypse.
But I am of course worried about the impact and consequences that we humans have on the planet, on other species, the climate, and ultimately ourselves and the future of our children. We are facing ecological collapse and must take immediate action. The best reactions are simple, like when people tell you that you made them laugh, inspired them and that they really appreciate your personal work.
What impact has the evolution of NFT:s and the cryptoart market had on your life as a digital artist?
– I get a lot more spam messages, haha! So far it didn’t have much impact on my life, as I still make most of my income with commercial work and selling licenses of my personal projects. Also, I actually haven´t been really active in the crypto art market yet. But I do see potential in it. Of course, it would be amazing to make a living based on my own ideas and artworks. Let´s see where it goes.
If you were to build a perfect metaverse, what would it be like and what would you want to create inside of it?
– I don’t think there is a perfect metaverse. But it would have real plants, real animals, real forests, rivers oceans, mountains, and even real food, just like the real world.
If that’s not possible perhaps a meeting place where every visiting Avatar is turned into a cat. A giant Totoro, that you can hug when you are sad. An immersive Cinema, in which you can play the role of any character. A place called MicroMegas, where you can scale your perspective, anywhere between the quarks-, and the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall`s point of view. A place where you can talk to Hyperobjects such as black holes, which speak in the voice of Timothy Morton, Werner Herzog, Ada Lovelace, Sun Ra, Adam Curtis, Nina Simone, or any other you wish to hear.
If you could live inside another artist’s head for a week, who would you pick?
– There are so many, I would rather like to do some brain-hopping from one artist to another all week long. But let’s say I have to spontaneously choose one: Stanley Kubrick, not only because he was a great artist, but also because I am curious what he is up to in Afterlife. But probably spending a week in Dalai Lamas head, would be much more relaxing.
If you could restart your career as a digital artist from day dot, what would you have done differently?
– Everything. Because I have bad memory.
