Mate Steinforth
Speculative Interfaces → Profile & Selected Works
I am a Berlin-based artist, creative director, and independent researcher with over three decades of experience at the intersection of visual culture and digital technology. My career spans co-founding the animation studio →Sehsucht Berlin, directing global campaigns for →Nike and →MTV, and most recently, contributing as a senior software developer at →Meta Reality Labs.
There, I am working on future-facing interface systems-integrating low-level →hardware programming, graphics engineering, and real-time interaction design for the world’s first true AR glasses →Orion with →neural input technologies.
Throughout this journey, I've become increasingly drawn not just to what we can build, but to how the tools we create shape cognition, behavior, and perception-often invisibly. This evolving interest has led me to shift away from commercial production and toward a research-driven design practice. I seek to understand and question the assumptions embedded in the interfaces we use every day. Through over 70 →Talks and Lectures worldwide, I am dissecting this investigation publicly.
Selected Works→
1000 Clouds per Second
An immersive installation that materializes the environmental cost of data infrastructure. Visitors enter a mirrored, fog-filled chamber-a tactile metaphor for the "cloud"-while a live counter tallies the carbon emissions generated by global digital activity in real time. The title plays on the poetic lightness of "clouds" and the precision of "per second," collapsing the perceived immateriality of digital systems into their physical, ecological reality.
Beyond environmental critique, the work stages a confrontation with opacity itself: the glossy, reflective exterior contrasts with a disorienting, obscured interior, challenging viewers to question what remains hidden in the interfaces they use daily. By situating abstract systems within a sensory, spatial experience, the project fuses speculative design, environmental media, and perceptual computing.
Expanding on themes first articulated in →my essay on NFTs and emissions, the piece continues a line of inquiry into the hidden materialities of digital culture and their broader ecological implications.
→ 1000 Clouds per SecondATD: Attention and Dial
A poetic →CGI short that reflects on the evolution of human-interface relationships-from the logic of dial-up to today's algorithmic attention economy. Titled after the Hayes command "ATD" (used to initiate early modem connections), the piece uses disembodied hands to explore the affective and behavioral residue of touchscreen culture: swiping, scrolling, and tapping rendered in hyperreal detail.
The work draws from media theory and affective computing, foregrounding the interface as a site of habituation, compulsion, and soft coercion. Gestures become symbolic: not just interactions, but micro-performances of desire and distraction. The minimal, sterile aesthetic serves to highlight the emotional charge embedded in our daily digital rituals.
→ ATD: Attention and DialMeta Reality Labs
As a Product Design Prototyper at Meta Reality Labs, I developed speculative interfaces for next-generation →AR and →neural input devices. My work explored how emerging platforms might enable natural, intuitive interaction through gaze, microgesture, voice, and ambient AI. Projects ranged from gaze-driven UI to emotionally responsive systems and seamless spatial navigation.
Working closely with engineers and researchers, I used Unity, custom tools, and →low-power silicon platforms to create high-fidelity simulations that informed both product direction and broader interaction models. These prototypes functioned as research vehicles-used to test assumptions about embodied computing, user perception, and assistive AI in real-world scenarios.
→All works under NDA, please →inquire personally
BetaBeta
A creative AR initiative exploring how augmented platforms mediate identity, intimacy, and self-performance. I co-founded BetaBeta to design expressive AR experiences-ranging from viral Instagram filters to spatially-aware fashion installations-that expand visual storytelling into interactive, lived space.
Projects include collaborations with artists and cultural institutions, such as a bespoke AR filter for →FKA twigs and an AR fashion prototype exhibited at FASHIONTECH Berlin. Across these works, I approached AR not as a gimmick but as a medium for cultural critique-where filters are masks, environments are interfaces, and play becomes a form of inquiry.
→ BetaBeta → Feature about AR FiltersCV (Selected)
- 2020–Present Prototyper, →Meta Reality Labs Speculative UI and AR/MR interaction prototyping
- 2009–2020 Co-Founder & Creative Director, → Sehsucht Berlin
Led award-winning work in motion design and storytelling - 2006–2009 Creative Director, → PSYOP New York Directed international campaigns in advanced visual media
- Founder, → Faux Images Independent salon series for motion design and digital storytelling
- Talks and Lectures at events such as OFFF, FITC, Pictoplasma, and universities worldwide; frequent juror at ADC, Animago, Spotlight
- Education Diploma in Graphic Design – HAWK Hildesheim, studies in Philosophy & English – University of Hannover Fine Arts, coursework – Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Ongoing study in screenwriting, digital theory, and design ethics