Max
Hi, my name is Max Häßlein (my last name means little bunny).
I am building visual objects and auditory tools, making films, taking photographs, coding websites and teaching, among other things. I am based in Nuremberg (Germany). Since the beginning of 2020 I keep a photographic diary.
Most of my projects start with a simple question: how does this work, and how could it work differently? I like making small, self-contained things: installations that run on their own on cheap, off-the-shelf hardware, instruments and players that make dealing with music and sound a bit more playful, and websites that are fast and don't need much more than HTML and CSS. I prefer simple, repairable technology over complex systems, and I think people should be able to understand and rebuild the tools they use; that's why I document a lot of my work as open source and write step-by-step tutorials.
I build most of my visual objects on small, cheap computers like the Raspberry Pi. The Dreamers casts dancing people onto the wall and edits its video feed to the music. Enter the Void projects music-controlled patterns and tries to predict the next beat. Videodrome zaps through hours of VHS footage on an old tube TV. Amélie prints selfies on thermal paper, and the print slowly fades away.
For sound I build small tools: Victoria is a Raspberry Pi sampler that makes playing with music a bit more accessible, with the samples loaded from a USB thumb drive. Suspiria is a headless player for Spotify, AirPlay and Plex. The Audiostream Mixer was an attempt at collaborative music streaming in the browser that never quite worked well enough for a live algorave. I also record binaural soundscapes when I'm at festivals or fairs.
I've been making websites since 2001, and since around 2007 it's been my main source of income. I specialize in custom tailored WordPress systems with hand-coded themes and plugins, with a focus on easy usability in the backend and clean, speed-optimized code. When I need a specific tool, I usually just build it myself. mh.gallery, Endless Canvas and mh.fileshare are some examples. In a design research project about independent social publishing I also built the Knot System, a collection of interchangeable modules for running your own website and following feeds.
I take my camera with me everywhere I go, and most of what I shoot day to day ends up in my photo diary. My everyday camera is an OM System PEN with various MFT lenses; my favorite is the Laowa Argus 18mm f/0.95, which is fully manual and a bit of a pain to focus wide open, but the results are worth it. I edit the photos on my iPad with Photomator.
Since 2018 I teach at the Design Faculty of TH Nürnberg (Georg Simon Ohm), currently Digital Experience Design in the sixth semester, an interdisciplinary project together with the Faculty of Computer Science and the University of Music. Along the way I've held a handful of workshops at the faculty, mostly an introduction to programming with p5.js and game design with Unreal Engine. In 2019 I led the two-day workshop Procedural Pleasures at the Nürnberg Digital Festival, and back in 2016 a colleague and I ran a one-week Pico-8 GameJam for the Projektwoche.
My approach is always the same: keep the barrier low, start with something playful, and let people end up with something they made themselves.
If you want to know what I'm up to at the moment, have a look at the now page. If you want to see everything on this website, open the sitemap. If you want to grab a coffee, get in touch. You can reach me at maxhaesslein@maxhaesslein.de or if we know each other in person, write me on Signal or Telegram.
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