MEXTURES HIGHLIGHT: @IONSOUNDS
This week we want to share the exceptional work of our friend Ingo, or as he's more widely known, @ionsounds. Ingo is a self-taught digital artist hailing from Germany and his artwork is altogether unique and mind-bendingly beautiful! Recently we had a great chat with him about life and art and we've compiled it for you here. Read along and enjoy!
My name is Ingo and I’m from Germany. Being a rather calm person and moving from East to West Germany in my younger years, I was kind of an outsider in high school. I learned early to spend time with myself, something that’s beneficial for my work now.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
I’ve been past that point for a while already. On the other hand, we never stop growing and learning. So to answer that, I’d like to make my living with my art and work as a designer/motion designer.
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE COMFORT FOOD?
Easy one: pizza!
WHAT'S YOUR SPIRIT ANIMAL?
This question took me the longest to answer, as I never really thought about that. After some reading, I think it’s the owl. Interesting question!
WHAT CELEBRITIES WOULD YOU CHOOSE TO BE YOUR PARENTS?
Ok, that’s very hypothetical. I would never want to exchange my parents for someone else. My mother was the strongest person I’ve met in my life and I’m very grateful to have had her. Also I don’t know any celebrities personally. In terms of inspiring people, I’d say Brian Eno, as I admire his understanding of music.
IF YOU COULD GIVE ONE PIECE OF ADVICE TO THE ENTIRE WORLD, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
It’s very simple: Love is everything. People must learn to respect and love themselves, other people and nature. I’d even say that this is mandatory for the future of mankind.
WHAT'S THE MOST INTERESTING THING ABOUT YOU THAT WE WOULDN'T LEARN FROM YOUR INSTAGRAM?
Well, I’m a keen record collector and was a DJ for psytrance music during my wild years. Music is the universal language and has a strong spiritual component to me. One of the most essential things in my life.
HOW DID YOU FIRST GET INTO PHOTOGRAPHY AND DESIGN?
I started out with taking shots of landscapes and buildings. Really basic stuff, but I enjoyed it and started to look out for potentially interesting motives in my daily life. I like interesting angles and symmetry in photos. And of course to capture a divine moment when you’re at a beautiful place.
HAS SOCIAL MEDIA PLAYED A ROLE IN YOUR ART?
Yes, a huge influence! When I started to make use of hashtags on IG to extend my range, I got hooked. I suddenly got feedback from foreign people around the world and so it slowly started growing on me. And what’s even more important on such platforms is the inspiration you get from other artists. There are so many amazingly talented people on IG. That’s IG in a nutshell for me: inspire people and get inspired. Besides that, you meet many interesting and lovely people here. I wouldn’t be where I am now with my work without IG.
IS THERE EVER ANYTHING THAT YOU'RE TRYING TO COMMUNICATE TO THE VIEWER THROUGH YOUR WORK?
Most of my works are really just designs that aim for visual pleasure or a certain atmosphere, but some are created to trigger an emotion or evoke a thought about something. One cool thing about art is the various ways the viewers interpret it.
HOW DO YOU TEND TO APPROACH YOUR EDITING PROCESS?
There isn’t "that one way" how I’m doing all my artworks. Often I have an idea in my mind. An image pops up and got planted like a seed in my brain, often when I’m lying in bed before falling asleep. Luckily I still remember those images/ideas the next day. If it’s good enough, I keep thinking of it during my day and refine and expand it. And when I finally have the time to sit on my Mac, I try to recreate the concept. That happens inside Cinema 4D most of the time. Unfortunately I’m not skilled enough to make it look exactly like I imagined it, but that’s no problem. It’s part of the process to try things out and experiment. A fair amount of my works have been created more or less accidentally by experimenting.
CAN YOU SHARE TWO OF YOUR FAVORITE MEXTURES FORMULAS?
I’ve selected two of my formulas and tweaked them a bit for this occasion.
"Cool Fader" - HELMPPA - Cool Fader boosts the details in the darker parts of the image and gives it a bright and subtle yellow and purple look. It adds a nostalgic feel and works well with beach shots or shots with large blue skies.
"Moss Garden" - CLURFRD - Moss Garden on the other hand is, as the title suggests, very suitable for shots in nature with a lot of grass or trees. It’s boosting the greens and creates a kind of damp mood like in the morning hours deep in the woods. Looks also very nice on mountain and rocky landscapes!
WHAT IS IT ABOUT MEXTURES THAT MAKES IT A PIECE OF YOUR PROCESS?
The great thing about Mextures is its great flexibility. It gives me endless possibilities to edit my photos. From small, subtle corrections to really wild creative edits that totally transform the image. Beside the standard tools, I can add as many filter layers as I want, adjust the strength and blend mode of each layer and select from a range of film types. With all that combined, I can edit my photo to achieve almost any look I want.
WOULD YOU SHARE A COUPLE OF YOUR FAVORITE PIECES?
The first one, "Attraction", was done completely on my iPhone. That was last year when I was visiting my parents in France. My mother suffered from cancer very badly and I was doing a lot of mobile edits during that time. I think it’s a great example for a simple design that is aesthetically appealing in a very universal way.
The second one, "Runner", is one of my latest pieces and done in Cinema 4D. I’m choosing this because it was a challenging work for me. There was a lot of trial and error and manual fine tuning necessary to achieve this result. But I’m really happy with it and got a lot of positive feedback.
WHAT INSPIRES YOU MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE?
Well, literally anything can be an inspiration. A sound, an emotion, an image, poetry, anything. But of course, the feedback and reach you can have on social networks are making a huge impact. You get to see the works of so many incredibly talented artists, you get inspired, you create, you get feedback and you might even inspire others with your work. That's all coming together to make me feel that I must create and bring the images from my mind to digital reality.
IF YOU COULD TAKE CREDIT FOR ONE INSTAGRAM FEED BESIDES YOUR OWN, WHOSE WOULD IT BE?
I would never do that, but as a theoretical question I’d say Beeple. The amount and quality of his posts is simply amazing.
WHO ARE THE PEOPLE THAT HAVE MOST INSPIRED YOUR ART?
Storm Thorgerson, Victor Vasarely and Salvador Dali are artists whose works impressed me alot from early on and surely had some impact on my own works. But there are many many more artists, from the past and recent that inspire me. It would be too much to name them all but you can check my followings on Instagram to see some of them!
