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Kim Asendorf on Elegant Symbiosis

Abstract visual artist Kim Asendorf spoke to Peter Bauman (Monk Antony) after the artist's latest release, PXL DEX. The pair discuss the conceptual and technical intricacies of the project, which tokenizes pixels to explore the elegant symbiosis between code, blockchains and culture.
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‍Peter Bauman: PXL DEX seems like a departure for you in that it appears to more meaningfully engage with blockchains, dimensionality and human elements, like participation. How might your thinking have changed from your previous two-dimensional projects like Monogrid? What perspectives or narratives are you emphasizing with this apparent shift?‍

‍Kim Asendorf: I wanted to develop further, exploring new aesthetics by extending my playground into the third dimension. I am also going deeper into the medium of blockchain. But generally, works that are minted and online with a website, for instance, like Monogrid, are already participative projects because that is what NFTs are by definition.
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You cannot call it a collection with a set of collectors and say it's not participative. 

My whole process to incorporate the blockchain into my practice started with Monogrid. It's a process with a learning curve—something you cannot start at 100%. You really dive into the topic—not just technically but also culturally—over a span of years. It's the same with my art practice. I cannot just start at being good. It's a long process to get somewhere. It is the same working with the blockchain as a medium—how I see it and how I value it. It's something where I slowly grew into it.
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The core is this very elegant symbiosis between code-based work, the blockchain as a smart database, and the culture of people who use it.

This culture includes lowbrow humor and memes but also people with high-minded ideals who are really convinced that crypto’s ideology is somehow the future. That is super fascinating to me because I have also thought computers are the future since I was a kid. Then there was the internet, the next future.

The blockchain itself is not high tech but it's a very interesting tool. It all blends with a certain culture and with art. Finding interesting concepts between all these feels super interesting to me—the bigger picture that I'm looking at. I definitely want to explore ideas and dynamics besides just making, let’s say, beautiful images. I've always been interested in the conceptual side of art, especially when technology is involved.

Yes, PXL DEX has this experimental part where I integrate the blockchain into the artwork one step further. It’s based on the idea—around for a while—of the tokenization of everything.
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It's not just a technical thing. It's also a statement to tokenize the pixel. 

The pixel has always been my main building block—its aesthetic and its role as the smallest element on a computer screen. I cannot abstract further. A pixel is the lowest possible level of abstraction. Tokenizing the pixel is about playing with possibilities and seeing what happens.
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I didn't even want to predict how people might react to it because that's not interesting enough for me. I want to see what is really happening. It was an experimental thought that I executed quite strictly—to the level of perfection where I can really be happy. The rest is up to interpretation and the audience.

‍Peter Bauman: You mentioned the symbiosis between code-based work, blockchains and cryptoculture. Tokenizing the pixel appears to be a deeper engagement—like we mentioned earlier—particularly with the latter two. To what extent is the PXL token a commentary upon or response to blockchain culture’s interest in meme coins and artist tokens?‍

‍Kim Asendorf: What I wanted to explore in the first place was the idea of composable NFTs. I didn't want to just have one token; I wanted to have the possibility to combine elements on the blockchain. I experimented with many ideas and even visual concepts but it quickly got too complex. Then it lost the easiness, the loveliness of being accessible and understandable.
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Even if the work itself doesn't have a clear message, if you make it accessible, it creates a message on its own. It will speak to people. 

That was the thought process behind it. Of course, I live in this world and see what's going on, and it's fascinating.
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Meme coins are part of what I may try to communicate with my work, which is mostly about the complexity of the world that I cannot process anymore, that I cannot understand anymore. I let it out in a weird system, doing weird things—visualizing my question marks somehow. 

The pixel tokens are part of it but it’s important to say PXL is absolutely not a meme coin. There's no joke behind it. It's part of my art so it's an art coin. It's also not an artist coin because I don't want to have people gamble on my name. That feels unattractive to me. I wouldn’t create a Kim Asendorf coin. That will never happen.

I prefer to hide a bit behind my work. My work should be bigger than myself. My work is my language and this pixel token is part of my work that speaks a language that many people can understand despite this higher level of abstraction.
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That makes the work ultra-contemporary in the sense that it's what the whole culture around me currently thinks about and deals with. 

There's a president now with a meme coin. This is unheard of and just leaves me speechless. Absolutely, I want to include those phenomena as part of my art to some extent but I make it something abstract that I can love again.
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I don't want to be a meme coin myself but if I create my own coin in a way where I control it and everything is like I want, then I can love this coin and all this mess around us.

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‍Peter Bauman: Can the coin be purchased on its own?‍

‍Kim Asendorf: For PXL DEX, I defined a maximum supply of 256 million pixels. This is 25% of the total supply of pixels. In the smart contract, the total market cap is fixed at 1.024 billion, which may suggest there could be a few further works in a PXL ecosystem. For now, I'm the only issuer so only people who purchase or collect the NFT get access to PXL. There's no public ICO or anything like this, meaning there is not a big supply on the market. Somebody would need a bigger chunk of PXL to set up a so-called liquidity pool. I'm not going to set it up myself; I have no clue about all the legalities and it was not my intention to create a financial security instrument people can pump and dump. But I like the possibility that it's technically possible and somebody else can do it. I can also see already in my smart contract that people are trying to set up liquidity pools and there have been PXL sales in Uniswap with very weird price actions.
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‍The secondary PXL market is basically non-existent, either super expensive or the pools just get emptied quickly, which is also an interesting mechanism happening. It's just fascinating that it’s possible and you still think of it like a coin or a currency even. It's something where money is attached but you use it like a tool. That is also totally new to me. It's like we're living in Monopoly. Nothing is real anymore. You use money like a tool.

Peter Bauman: The token can be seen as a currency but you also mentioned that tokenizing the pixel is a statement. You're placing the pixel on a pedestal, forcing our attention to it. This foregrounding of the pixel goes against the grain of many digital creatives who typically try to make pixels disappear. What statement are you making by venerating the pixel?‍
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‍Kim Asendorf: It has a lot of meta layers to it. First, I come from the time when pixels were clearly visible on a screen. It is somehow within my understanding of aesthetics—I just like it. Exactly, we are now living in the Retina Display times where the idea is the opposite. You cannot see the pixel anymore but still, the pixel is the building block off on any screen or display.

People could say, “The pixel should be invisible. It's the whole image.” But you could also say, “With just pixels, I can build literally every image.” There are other projects, like Every Icon, which presents the pixel in all possible combinations to potentially create every image. That's a bit the direction I was going in.

Personally, as an artist, the pixel has huge value for me and by tokenizing it, I’m expressing that. It’s my very personal view. I don't want to force anything on anybody. It's a way to inject my worldviews into the work. It’s like watching a film or reading a novel; either you really get into the story and get lost in it, or it just doesn't speak to you. With digital culture, internet culture, or now crypto culture, we have created a lot of people who understand the language that I speak. It’s completely different from ten years ago, where there was only a very small scene of people interested in these constructs.

‍Peter Bauman: Like John F. Simon Jr., whose work Every Icon you mentioned, you’re highlighting what the pixel can achieve. There’s a contrasting school of thought, voiced in our community by artists like Operator and Mitchell F. Chan, that technology can overshadow or distract from the other ideas in a work. Chan espouses a solution to make technology invisible. Do you see your work as challenging this approach?‍

‍Kim Asendorf: I got into art and I love art because it can be everything and anything. Everybody can participate and even be an artist. As soon as people want to put rules on art and how to do and don'ts and do's and all this stuff, they lose me anyway. I think it's super cool that people have opinions and there are different ways of thinking. Every artist will eventually go a certain path with their practice.

People think you need to hide the technology? I don't see a single reason why. It's like if you have a painting and say, “Please hide the canvas. Hide the wall.” I can see that some specific works really need that to work and communicate more effectively. If you need to hide the technology for a specific work to make your point more clear, absolutely. But there's no way to generalize this to all practices.

I think Operator incorporates technology heavily; they even turned choreographies into data to put it on the blockchain. Much of their work—and even their branding—appears technical to me. I mean, they are called Operator. I think they are asking you to not make tech demos—basically works where the tech is more interesting than the art. But hey, I'm a technical person. I'm an industrial electrician. I went to university and studied technical informatics before I switched to art school. I have a big technical background. I love making music. I love using synthesizers.
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My work is 100% digital and lives on computers. I just love technology. I love digital technology and all it enables me to do. I cannot see a reason to hide it. I’d rather celebrate it. I don't hate cables. I love cables.

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‍Peter Bauman: It seems like the medium is foundational to the message for you. I suppose their argument is that by relying too much on the technology, any other meaning in the work can get lost.‍

‍Kim Asendorf: Most of my works are virtual so completely relying on technology. I would say this is old-fashioned thinking because it would only distract from the work if the audience is not up to date in terms of technology. If I go into an exhibition and there's a computer somewhere, it doesn't impress me; it doesn't change anything. It's normal for me.
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The zeitgeist is that technology is everywhere. That means if you can't handle technology as a spectator, you are basically too old already.

For me, technology became natural, part of our daily lives. If relying on technology changes the meaning, why even use it at all in the first place?
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‍Peter Bauman: How do you balance expecting your audience to be technical enough while also being open to newcomers, ensuring your technical work doesn’t veer into the hermetic?‍

‍Kim Asendorf: I had an interesting experience working at my local TV station, carrying the cables for the cameraman. The cameraman was seeing a shadow somewhere in the corner and told the light guy to remove it. I asked him, “Why bother? Nobody on TV would ever recognize that.”
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He said, “My quality standard is for the one single person that would see the shadow, the expert, and I don't mind the rest.” That's a bit what I also think. I make work for my own standard.

I wouldn't say it's exceptionally high but it's definitely different. I don't think, “What could my audience need now?” and then provide that. It's rather what I really want to explore, what I want to see.

With interactive art, it becomes even more delicate because it has a tendency to over-involve the audience. I don't like that in general. You can turn the audience into a clown for making weird stuff if they move a certain way in front of the art. I try to find more elegant ways of integrating the audience. I really value and appreciate the audience. I love that people reach out and want to know things because that is my work.
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I'm never annoyed by people who want to know or want to ask questions; it's part of my practice. That's super interesting. That is also how I see the audience as part of the work. 

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‍Peter Bauman: We spoke about interaction at the end of 2023 for the AGH article with Leander Herzog and Andreas Gysin. Back then, you said something similar—that you prefer passive work that “just happens,” even saying that interaction can be “awkward.” But PXL DEX is by far your most interactive work yet. Why move in that direction seemingly against your own will?‍

‍Kim Asendorf: I definitely think it's a good question. Interactivity, in a classical sense, is much more direct. For me, interactivity is not sitting on some device and turning a knob. Maybe I’m old-fashioned that way. For example, a guitar player playing a guitar has nothing to do with interactivity. They just use a tool as it's supposed to be used. Interactivity is when it becomes more awkward. You do something to get something out and it feels like it doesn't make sense anymore. That's where interactivity starts. It becomes meaningless.

Interactive art is about interactivity. For me, this work is absolutely not about interactivity. It was necessary because otherwise the tokenization of pixels couldn't happen. The only way to tokenize pixels is to make it possible to also deposit and withdraw the pixels from the actual artwork. The interactivity here is just a byproduct. It's not the meaning of the work and it doesn’t make this an interactive work. No, it's the tokenization of pixels.

‍Peter Bauman: Before you mentioned that only a quarter of the PXL tokens have been released. Is there anything else you can reveal about your plans with the ecosystem in the coming months and years?‍

‍Kim Asendorf: My idea is definitely for it to be a multi-year ecosystem, like a work series that I see vaguely somewhere appearing. But I have no concrete examples now because the later work will be a response. I also want to reflect more on how the project is being received. What do people enjoy about it? That should inspire me to think about how I can use it further.

With PXL DEX, I knew there was a certain level of complexity that people could still enjoy easily. So I tried to create something complex without making it overly complex. For instance, I don’t see how parametric art can be perceived as art anymore. It's a tool. People either want to use tools or want to collect art.
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I want the artist to literally do the work. 

Having these pixels as a dynamic element seemed to me like the maximum of what I could still accept as artwork. I might open up this limitation, planning to go a step further with a follow-up work in the pixel ecosystem, but preserve my expectations to have it still perceived as art.

I don't really want to do the same thing again—but it looks different. That is the question: how can I even get one step further? What else could I do with it? I have a few ideas but now I need a bit of distance from the work. I need to work on something else and then come back in a few months and assess. I think, “This was good; this was bad. There was an interesting question asked by Peter that led me to some interesting thoughts.” I definitely want to make these pixels part of a few more works that I only vaguely see now.
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‍Peter Bauman: When you mention that this project can last for years, I think of preservation. Your work is in GLSL and JavaScript with few to no external libraries. What’s important for you in terms of preservation: the idea itself—the pseudocode—or the original code?‍

‍Kim Asendorf: With preservation, I think a lot about the original work. I want to preserve the original work and not just the idea that I could print in the book and replicate later. For me, it means I'm now able to have my work preserved on the blockchain. I don't know how long it will last but I think JavaScript and maybe even GLSL have the potential that even in a hundred years, you could run it in an emulator.

If technology has changed too much, you could still enjoy the original code to some extent and probably port it to a newer language. I personally use GitHub and plan to put more code on it—maybe even make it somehow public, which is also another way of preservation that it becomes replicable for basically anybody. However, it’s a bit of a gamble at the moment. If you are too deep in it, you don't really want to share your recipes just like that.

In general, of course, it would be great if these ideas can survive for a longer time. My algorithms are usually complex in the sense that I'm stacking a lot of ideas on top of each other to get to a certain point. I don't use many classic algorithms. Of course, I use Perlin noise a lot, like these very basic things. On top of that, I write a lot of weird combinations of instructions. That would be nice if, in some years or maybe after my life, there's still these ideas around and they’re usable, replicable and mostly displayable so that it can still be enjoyed on the art level.

‍Peter Bauman: When is code more than just the execution of “these ideas”?‍

‍Kim Asendorf: In some artists’ work, the idea itself is much stronger than the code behind it. Then the code is just the execution. My work is much more experimental. There is no initial idea. Sure, there are some ideas but only through a lot of experimentation and conceptual twistings do I get to the results that I'm looking for. I hope that for some of these works it's not clear how they are coded. You see it and you wonder, even as a coder, how it’s done. That means it's not enough to preserve the idea. You also need to preserve the code because it might not be so easy to replicate otherwise.

‍Peter Bauman: Can you talk about the significance of creating the project independently? It must have been very liberating but were there any challenges or lessons learned?‍

‍Kim Asendorf: I was able to create the artwork completely on my own—from the initial ideas and experimentation. I always loved making websites for my work. That is still the core—the central point where you go to enjoy the art. I might be a control freak because that's what I realize now: I need to be writing the smart contracts and all these parts as well. I'm quite happy that I was able to make that all on my own. It speaks my language 100%. 
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Kim Asendorf is a German visual artist who employs a fusion of experimental and conceptual strategies to craft abstract animations, images and sculptures.
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‍Peter Bauman (Monk Antony) is Le Random's Editor-in-Chief.