Aesthetic trends are temporary. They look cool, they catch on, they get stale, and then they die. Furthermore, hollow trends may only be created by hollow artists and perpetuated by hollow consumers. Hightosis couldn’t be further from hollow. The TeamSESH visual artist considers his process a “sacred healing method,” and uses it to tackle life’s biggest questions.
Hightosis grew up in a small town about 45 minutes outside of Washington D.C. He says, “If my hometown was a color, it would be grey. There’s no one with big dreams here.” His work often explores the idea that we exist alone, together.
In August of 2016, Hightosis joined SESHDIGITAL, the video art branch of TeamSESH. The current video roster lists Hemlig, 0-3, HTTPghost, Kreate, Peace Design, Spectator, Tyrus Creek, and Hightosis. Before committing full-time to video art, Hightosis ran a daycare program for dogs. He says he had fun at first, but long hours amongst the kennels grew tiresome.
When creating visual accompaniments for SESH musicians, Hightosis immerses himself in his collaborator’s world of themes, textures, and subject matter. His videos for Greaf explore ideas such as home, nostalgia, and commercial mundanity. He even crops his shots like Greaf crops his album covers. When working with cat soup, Hightosis includes amorphous neon shapes to align with soup’s rubbery sound and visual palate. His videos for Drew The Architect feature natural patterns and soothing textures, just like the music.
Some Hightosis videos resemble a Google Earth tour of an alternate reality. Other videos obscure humanity through extreme digitization of nature’s most organic things, such as skeletons and leaves. It’s often hard to tell if an image is computer generated or captured from reality. Unsurprisingly, people constantly ask, “How the fuck did you make this?” on his posts.
Read below to get an exclusive peek into the process, history, and mind of Hightosis, the visual creator galaxies ahead of the pack.
Underground Underdogs: Aside from your work as Hightosis, who are you?
Hightosis: My name is Ben, and quite honestly, I struggle to find a way to describe myself aside from my craft. Along with my creative side, I consider myself a curious individual. I ask questions and search for answers namely about space and time and our existence and what reality is. The universe is so fascinating and I spend a lot of time wondering about it and being humbled by it, all while being inspired by it. A self-described outcast, I felt pretty alone as a creative/artistic individual as I feel most people of that nature do in the early part of their lives. I am lucky to have a family that was always behind my creative drive though, and that helped me stay true to who I was throughout my life. Along with that creative drive and a strong curiosity, I feel pretty emotionally aware. I find myself caring about the feelings of individuals, open minded to all backgrounds and wounds. I hate to know others hurt.
Walk me through your timeline as an artist.
I started dabbling in video work first. Growing up I was always drawing and making visual art. I actually went to art college (which didn’t end too well,) but either way, visual art has always been my direction. After college didn’t work out, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, so I partook in the video game community and actually had a lot of experience editing there, like 2-3 years, and that sort of propelled me into the world of real life video editing. I had a video editing instinct. Sound art is amazing but I didn’t have the intuition like I did with visual arts. Eventually, after being surrounded by so many musicians, and inspired namely by TeamSESH, I started trying out making music, but it was more of a hobby making cool sounds. Only as of 2019 would I consider myself making music, and even then it’s just obscure sounds that happen to make sense together. There’s a certain satisfaction creating music and visuals together. You really are able to express yourself.
How did you go from a fan of TeamSESH to a member?
Well, I was introduced to SESH by a buddy of mine who I met through the gaming community. Shoutout to him. From there I began paying attention to SESH and appreciating what they stood for as creative, different individuals. As I drifted from gaming content to real life content, I started doing videos for SESH producers and a video for Bones. It was a response to the video he dropped for “TheCurseOfTheGhost.” He said he liked it and I said thank you. It was a very brief interaction.
Around the same time, Tyrus Creek and I were chatting. Soon after, he created SESHDIGITAL, and I was brought onto the team. This was August 2016. Joining was very under the radar as SESHDIGITAL was just a day old at the time. Nobody really knew what it was, but ever since, it’s blossomed into an incredibly beautiful community and I’m really honored to be a part of it.
Are there any TV or computer programs that inspire you?
Mostly music and music videos from the 80’s and 90’s, primarily from rock or alt rock bands. Anywhere from Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Tool to bands like Taking Back Sunday and Blink-182. As far as modern stuff, I’d say obscure Instagram pages, weird YouTube pieces, and ARG’s (Alternate Reality Games) – avant garde content, if you will. People who harness strangeness and push boundaries both in their ideas and the presentations of their ideas. I also enjoy listening to people like Terence McKenna or Alan Watts talk, even Stephen Hawking. Questioning the universe and time and space is very inspiring to me, and I find myself heavily incorporating those ideas into my work. And sometimes, I’m my own inspiration. I push my own boundaries, push my own comfort, all while trying to speak my messages and ideas.
Do you have any favorite pieces that you’ve done?
That’s a super tricky question to answer. Out of the covers I’ve made for Bones, I’d have to say the Disgrace cover or the Carcass cover. As for videos, I’d say “Dedication Chant” for Fifty Grand, “netcapture” for Drew The Architect, cat soup, and Curtis Heron, “those cracks in my eyes” for Kodyak, “wounds” for Vegard Veslelia and Drew The Architect, and Deadtelevision Episode 1.
I remember Disgrace was teased with a different cover, then it switched to yours on the day of the release. Was that planned or was it a last-minute switch? Also, tell me about the concept for the photo.
Honestly, looking back, I think it was a last minute switch. Maybe not the very last minute, but I don’t think the original plan was to use the cover I made. The photo is a still from a video I made around that time called “bone root.” It consisted of a TV out in the woods, near my home back on the east coast, and it was playing images from various footage at Bones concerts, as well as some footage from the PaidProgramming2 teaser. I’m fairly certain the song I used was a song by Drew the Architect. It was especially tricky to link power cords way out there into the woods but I was really set on this idea of a piece of machinery out in the woods, alone but functioning. That video had been up a couple of days or maybe a week prior to the release of Disgrace, then Bones and I talked about it being used for the cover. Then, it ended up getting used. That was maybe the second or third video I ever uploaded in my early days at TeamSESH.
What are some goals you have for you and your art?
I’d love to be able to display my art in a gallery. Both with prints on the walls, but also screens with looping images as well. I think it’d be cool to have headsets attached to some screen loops too, kind of like a museum thing where you put on a headset and push the red button and the guy explains what this dinosaur you’re looking at liked to eat. Only in this gallery setting would it be poetry, or with a small sound loop to accompany the visual loop. I think that’s the real end goal, to either travel and set up something like that in different spaces or have my own actual space somewhere, most likely in Los Angeles. I mean this is real end goal stuff, not to happen immediately.
Another goal I have is to be able to perform live visuals for my friends. Now this is attainable in the nearer future. However, it would be a shift in my process since what I do in my space is like painting a picture, taking my time and correcting mistakes, sculpting, there is a lot of going back and forth with myself, while a live visual performance is much more fluid and in-the-moment, which is a beautiful craft, but not something I am truly skilled with yet. Overall, I aim to inspire and inform people with my art. If anything, I really hope I can affect people positively and encourage them to think outside the box and have an open mind when it comes to creativity and themselves.
What can fans expect from you in the near future?
Honestly, just the continued release of sounds and videos on instagram and twitter. Deadtelevision Episode 2 will be released soon, I hope. It’s been a major mission getting it situated, but when it’s done it’ll be worth the wait and I think and hope people will see why it took so long. Another print collection is coming soon as well.
Right now, for a limited time, Hightosis is doing commissions for cover art. DM him on Instagram or Twitter to inquire.