Hi, I'm Mathias Mars

I design products, build systems, tell stories, and experiment where art, technology, and human experience meet.

 

My Story

I’ve spent an overly large part of my life trying to figure out what exactly I’m supposed to be. For a long time, I assumed there had to be a good answer.

I was always curious about too many topics, made connections between things that apparently weren’t supposed to be connected, and had a tendency to disappear down rabbit holes until I understood how something worked. I could become completely obsessed with an idea, learn everything I needed to make it real, and then suddenly find myself somewhere entirely different.

That can make for a slightly chaotic biography, but retrospectively, there’s an obvious pattern. What really interested me all my life is usually happening in the spaces between. Between art and technology, physical and digital, rational systems and messy human beings. I want to explore the structures underneath. Whether it’s an interface, an object, a story, an abstract relationship, or an entire system. I want to experience it until I can intuitively understand, and consciously alter its course.

For years, I tried to fit that into conventional definitions, personally and professionally alike. I got pretty good at it, too. But it never felt quite like the right thing. The more I learned about myself, the less interested I became in reducing myself to something easily explainable. So instead of fighting this urge, I started expanding on it. That has probably been the biggest evolution in my work and in myself. I stopped treating curiosity as a distraction from the path and started realizing that curiosity is the path.

These days, I’m less concerned with pristine outcomes. Don’t get me wrong, I still like shiny things, but the most interesting experiences are hidden in the dirt. I care more about what I can learn, how I’m changed by the paths I’m taking, and what I create along the way. This website is basically the ongoing record of that process.

There will be design here. And technology, experiments, objects, films, thoughts, strange thoughts, and probably a few things that are difficult to classify.

And that’s kind of the point.