LANGLANDS & BELL INFINITE LOOP
LANGLANDS & BELL INFINITE LOOP
Interview between Langlands & Bell and Harry Laughland, January 2017
Harry Laughland: I think the best place to start our conversation would be with the latest series of prints, collectively entitled Infinite Loop, a name that is also the address of the new Apple headquarters in Cupertino – a vast circular building designed by Foster & Partners, with a circumference of one mile and dubbed ‘the Spaceship’ by its employees. Can you elaborate a bit more on this building along with others depicted in this series such as the Nvidia headquarters in Santa Clara and the IBM Research Center in Beijing? Langlands & Bell: The architecture that we are looking at is a new architecture, one that is developing as we speak. It’s unusual for us to work with architecture as it is being built. It has been commissioned by companies that only started 20, 30 or 40 years ago, often in very modest circumstances in spare rooms and garages. Then, as they grew, they moved into business parks, with generic, banal, uninteresting buildings, but now they’ve become more successful, some of the biggest corporations in the world, and they’re caught between wanting to express their success with buildings that are iconic, like the new Apple headquarters at Cupertino designed by Foster, or retaining the more informal feel of the original campus ‘start-up’. The new Facebook HQ in Menlo Park is an example; although it’s huge, the new building is quite understated. It’s low, only three storeys, really just one enormous open plan office floor floating on stilts, with a green garden or park-like roof. So it seems quite discreet, and relatively low impact. The paradox is that they commissioned Frank Gehry to design the building and Gehry is known for designing exuberant eye-catching landmarks! HL: And why do you think there is that paradox? A seeming coyness on behalf of the companies involved? L&B: Well, there are several reasons, maybe that coyness is partly due to their real role still being in some ways relatively undefined, they are still evolving and they are shy about revealing the very considerable power and ambition they have. Their rapid success is built in-part on public acceptance of their original youthful ‘campus idealism’, the novelty of their innovation, the anarchic freedom of the early internet, and their aura of informality. For example Steve Jobs only ever wore a black polo neck sweater with jeans and trainers, and Mark Zuckerberg is a billionaire who attends business meetings in a T-shirt. However the question is often asked: what is the real role or function of these companies today, are they
Infinite Loop proofs laid out in the artists’ studio
L&B: Yes, it’s the old Henry Ford thing but multiplied exponentially: You can have any colour car you want as long as it’s black. You can have as much information as you like, as long as we supply it to you in the form we tell you it’s going to be supplied in. It is wonderfully enabling and empowering, but at the same time very controlling. We are all slaves to their systems. HL: And I wonder if this disconnect continues in the physical architecture of the buildings. When these companies started out they really were accessible and free, but now how accessible are they, and the actual buildings themselves? I doubt you could walk up to the front door and ask to look around! This also links to their shapes as well. The Facebook sculpture you have made shows the world’s largest open plan office building: a single room 4 acres in size and the Apple headquarters is a completely circular building, where presumably the implication is of equality… Apple Campus II construction site, Cupertino, designed by Foster & Partners
entertainment companies, media companies, publishers, or news organizations? Or are they just technology companies – which is what they say they are? They are all of those things, and more, but more importantly they are huge corporations that are creating a new kind of global order that is extremely pervasive. They are re-shaping the culture, politics and economies of every society on the planet comprehensively. Companies like Apple, Microsoft and Facebook are establishing all kinds of rules, systems, and orders, that we have little option but to follow. These are just as pervasive, or more pervasive for most of us, than the physical architecture of the buildings. So they may feel that if they start commissioning highly visible iconic buildings, as all powerful, commercial and political entities have done before them, they may become a focus for discontent. Basically, monumental architecture does not really fit in with the public image they want to project, and at the very least this may inhibit their growth. HL: So perhaps then there is a disconnect between what they are saying and what they are actually offering? They are saying “OK, we are making information accessible to everyone, everywhere”, yet at the same time they are making this information accessible in a way that is determined exclusively by them.
L&B: Yes, both buildings are spectacles of endless access. But of course they’re not really unhindered, it depends on your position. It depends where you are, or where you’re looking at it from, and at Apple you always return to your starting point. It’s an ‘infinite loop!’ HL: Precisely. L&B: They want to convey that they’re user-friendly and accessible. The layouts of these buildings, which are routinely described as ‘campuses’, are apparently intended to foster spontaneous interactions and the innocent serendipity of youth. The structure of the Gates Foundation for instance is based on curved, boomerang-like forms apparently intended to symbolize communication and the movement of information in space. HL: I wonder if you could elaborate a bit more about how you have chosen to display them in this series of prints, because they themselves are seemingly floating in space – devoid of contextual surroundings. Was this a conscious decision? L&B: Yes it is intentional. We isolated them in order to focus on the most symbolic elements or revealing parts of the structure. Sometimes we’re focusing on the main figure, shape, or object: the typology and visualization of these buildings.
HL: But there is also a kind of anonymity here, it is non-autographic. You are presenting the factual data of the building without really inputting your own opinions. L&B: We don’t want or need to include our opinions. The building on its own is enough. By removing all the extraneous detail to focus on the building, we’re presenting it for contemplation as a way in. HL: But would I also be right in thinking that you are trying to remove yourselves as well? L&B: In a way yes. We are not really there, you are the person looking at it. But maybe this is because the two of us work together, we don’t want either one of us to be privileged, we are balancing things between us. HL: So you remove the personality, because there are two personalities, and therefore the only equitable way to do it … L&B: … is to remove both. HL: And do you think the choice of colour has something to do with this? Where does the choice of colour come from? L&B: We select the colours intuitively. But let’s take a step back for a moment to talk about the process involved in this whole series. There are two types of models in the exhibition, and in the series of prints. There are models which are plans of the building, looking inside the building, like the Apple Headquarters in Cupertino, or Facebook, Menlo Park, and there are models which look at the building from the outside as a kind of shape or object, as with the Nvidia Headquarters in Santa Clara or the Gates Foundation in Seattle, where we are looking at their presence, or ‘objectness’ in space. Having decided on the buildings and how to depict them, we photograph the model and transfer it to the computer, where we draw back into them digitally and explore the structure or the form. Our last step is to assign the colour. Before that it is just structure, surface and form, undefined by the background. We choose a colour that we feel suits the subject and the shape and, by being isolated, its identity is emphasised.
Langlands & Bell, Facebook, Menlo Park in production in the artists’ studio
HL: I think that point about identity leads us to the architects that these companies have chosen to work with. A lot of them fit the category of ‘starchitect’, whereas others are more corporate. Do you think the choice of architect is a statement about these companies’ identity? L&B: Undoubtedly, especially with Apple and Foster, who share a futuristic aesthetic approach, and a liking for sleek sophisticated technological design. Some of these companies clearly identify with certain architects. Maybe Gehry’s anarchic exuberance appealed to Facebook, but the paradox is that the building he has designed for them at Menlo Park is not a ‘crazy’ gesture, it is actually quite discreet. Both of these architects are huge stars. But the Nvidia Headquarters is by Gensler who are a successful but much more anonymous corporate outfit. Similarly the Gates Foundation is by NBBJ from Seattle, and the IBM research and development centre in Beijing is by Next Architects, a Dutch firm. We think these companies were chosen less because of who they are, their star quality, and more for their design and business competence. However they still often deploy a kind of ‘nostalgia for the future’ design trajectory to symbolise the pioneering impulse to explore new frontiers, quite ‘Star Trek’, really.
of vast amassed wealth against ambitious charitable gestures, ‘giving something back’ as they say. The dichotomy of this kind of complicity has been evident throughout history. It’s a paradox echoed by the approaches of other companies too. For example the entire roof of the Apple building is covered in solar panels, while the Facebook building has a green roof. This seems to indicate that both companies recognize the importance of the eco agenda and are committed to being sustainable, but the business models of these companies are completely unsustainable. The Apple business model, like many other businesses today, is all about enforced obsolescence which encourages increased consumption of their products. Nothing is built to last, systems are not supported beyond about 5 years, and although we’re drowning in defunct computers and mobile phones, more crucially it feels as though we are being forced to submit to a kind of enforced amnesia as our past is being progressively erased, or moved beyond our reach. HL: Whereas, let’s say, 30 years ago technological achievements or products were built to last, not to be immediately subsumed by the next model or the next operating system. I guess though that this is an example of what the companies you are looking at would call progress? L&B: Maybe their accountants and shareholders call it progress.
HL: The desire to be pioneering and to be always looking forward to a brighter world is something that I think brings in the Gates Foundation; after all they openly claim that they want to eradicate the world of various diseases. But initially when I saw this group of prints, I thought it was somewhat of an outlier, not really being an ‘internet giant’ as such. Can you talk a bit about why you have included that company? L&B: We think there are several reasons. One reason is that it is funded by Bill and Melinda Gates, and obviously it wouldn’t exist without the success of Microsoft, and Bill Gates’ incredible abilities with computers and software and the whole Microsoft company. Also, given how it is set up, if Microsoft goes bust then the Foundation will still be there. So they are planning for the future and aiming at posterity. Similarly Mark Zuckerberg, who is at an earlier stage in a similar process, is talking about eradicating disease with money generated by Facebook. There’s a long history to this kind of philanthropy: Mellon, Carnegie, Nobel – the inventor of dynamite, an arms manufacturer really – those people were offsetting the implications
HL: Can we now talk about this group of prints in relation to the rest of your work throughout your career? Say we have your work on Afghanistan situated at one end and this latest body of prints at the other, what is the link that connects them? L&B: Well we move from subject to subject depending on what’s relevant, but ultimately it’s about relationships. Nearly all of our work explores human social and cultural relationships, from the personal to the political, through looking at architecture and other structures that we build and inhabit. In the case of the works we made following our visit to Afghanistan, it was religious architecture that first led us in that direction, because we live and work in the East End, close to the East London Mosque and the Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue and we were working on a series of sculptures looking at mosques, synagogues, churches, etc. because we suddenly realised how important these buildings are in terms of people’s identity. So in that particular instance it was a mixture of religious
architecture, aviation networks and typologies, maps, and the like, which we first began to explore in the context of the European political integration of the late 80s and early 90s. HL: So then architecture would be the link, but it would be architecture in the widest sense. L&B: Yes, architecture in a very wide sense, as an arrangement of structure and a desire to order. HL: There is a kind of architecture in the skies, with these criss-crossing networks, that you used in the Air Routes series, which is then combined with the architecture of American power. All three targets are symbols of American foreign policy that al-Qaeda found so abhorrent; economic with the World Trade Center, military with the Pentagon, and political with the White House (the supposed target for the downed United 93 flight) – and then combined again with the architecture that you found in Afghanistan. L&B: Yes, with the Afghanistan work we were talking about the architecture as both a target and a symbol of identity. The twin towers, these giant skyscrapers, made an extreme contrast with the modest, spare circumstances pertaining in Afghanistan, where bin Laden had based himself in a simple house in a remote spot looking over a lake. Your point about the symbols of American
Langlands & Bell, The House of Osama bin Laden, Turner Prize 2004, Tate Britain
power is right. For al-Qaeda to use the domestic aviation network as a weapon to deliver the attack, to commandeer those planes and turn them around was symbolic and unprecedented. HL: So architecture is definitely a common thread. I wonder if there is also more to be said about something we touched upon earlier about your methods for making work. L&B: Well, since 2002 and 2003 when we made The Artist’s Studio and The House of Osama bin Laden our first interactive digital models, we’ve become increasingly involved with digital mediums for making art. In this series of prints we are combining both digital and analogue ways of working in one body of work.
Langlands & Bell, Air Routes of the World (Night), 2002
HL: It seems this is a desire to keep using whatever technological advancements are made. So with The House of Osama Bin Laden you were using the most advanced digital modeling systems, and, as with the other virtual realities you have built, it has been about using cuttingedge technology. When thinking about this I couldn’t help but think of Richard Hamilton who
HL: He was completely non-hierarchical in his way of working. It didn’t matter if he was working on a poster, postcard, painting or print, everything was treated the same. It seems like there’s a similarity in the way you work as well. The prints have equal importance to the sculptures which are in turn equal to the way you’ve designed the catalogue cover. L&B: Yes there is a continuity, every element is connected to every other, even the font we use is part of who we are. HL: Lastly I wanted to ask you if this series is going to develop further? Are there other buildings that you are thinking of looking at?
Richard Hamilton, Five Tyres remoulded (portfolio), 1971
was obsessed with technology, and with using the latest equipment, and of course in this body of work you have the title piece Infinite Loop which shares similarities with Hamilton’s Five Tyres remoulded. Would a comparison to Hamilton be an apt one? L&B: Yes, we’ve often looked at that work by Hamilton and always liked it. We have a lot of respect for his way of working generally, including his social observation like the Kent State series, or his three diptychs about the conflict in Northern Ireland: The Citizen, The Subject, The State. What was also so interesting about him, something we relate to very strongly, is that he didn’t really acknowledge boundaries between design, art and architecture. To him aesthetic disciplines were a unity, and he also loved new technology, he loved the physical beauty of it, just using it, and the promise it holds. He was also so aware of the power of the image, and very conscious of branding and the language of branding strategies. We thought if he could see this futuristic building designed by Foster for Apple he would be fascinated by it, just like he was by the Apple computer, so given the formal similarity of the geometry we thought it was a good fit.
L&B: Yes, we’re looking at the headquarters of many other internet and technology companies because they’re so powerful and they have such huge resources to commission new buildings. As with the cathedrals of the middle ages, the baroque palaces and gardens of the enlightenment, and the factories and railway stations of the industrial revolution, one of the things we’re exploring is whether this architecture is era-defining – the architecture of the twenty-first century, and whether architecture as a whole still has this kind of role to play in the ‘Information Age’.
INFINITE LOOP
Apple (Oblique), 2016 Archival inkjet on 310gsm HahnemĂźhle Photo Rag Bright White paper in four colour variants (cherry / cream / purple / green) Paper and image 75 x 75 cm each Each colour variant in an edition of 10
Gates Foundation (Seattle), 2016 Archival inkjet on 310gsm HahnemĂźhle Photo Rag Bright White paper in four colour variants (mauve / olive green / pink / rust) Paper and image 75 x 75 cm each Each colour variant in an edition of 10
Nvidia (Santa Clara), 2016 Archival inkjet on 310gsm HahnemĂźhle Photo Rag Bright White paper in four colour variants (orange / purple / yellow / blue) Paper and image 75 x 75 cm each Each colour variant in an edition of 10
IBM (Beijing), 2016 Archival inkjet on 310gsm HahnemĂźhle Photo Rag Bright White paper in four colour variants (grey / red / blue / light grey) Paper and image 75 x 75 cm each Each colour variant in an edition of 10
Apple (Levitation), 2016 Archival inkjet on 310gsm HahnemĂźhle Photo Rag Bright White paper in four colour variants (grey / orange / green / blue) Paper and image 87 x 74 cm (each) Each colour variant in an edition of 10
Infinite Loop, 2016 Archival inkjet on 310gsm HahnemĂźhle Photo Rag Bright White paper in four colour variants (cream / pale blue / green / red) Paper and image 87 x 145 cm each Each colour variant in an edition of 15
SCULPTURE
Facebook, Menlo Park, 2017 Acrylic, MDF, paint, lacquer, card 95 x 215 cm x 8 cm Unique â‰
Apple, Sunny Vale, 2017 Acrylic, MDF, paint, lacquer, card 104 x 104 x 8 cm Unique
LANGLANDS & BELL
MAJOR COMMISSIONS & INSTALLATIONS 2006 – 2016
Beauty < Immortality. 2016. Permanent memorial to Frank Pick, Piccadilly Circus Underground Station, London. Materials: Travertine marble, bronze, vitreous enamel on steel, LEDs and associated electrics. Client: Transport for London. Curators: Art on the Underground, London Transport Museum. Art consultant: Ann Elliott.
Mode(l)s of Thought. 2014. Models for sculpture 1979-2014 Gibberd Gallery, Harlow, UK. Curator: Corinna Dunlea.
Call & Response (Le Réponse). 2012. Interactive entrances for the Paris Metro / T3 Tramway interchange. Materials: Fritted low iron glass, intelligent LEDs and associated electronics, stainless steel. Location: Porte de Vincennes, Paris, France. Client: City of Paris / RATP. Artistic Director; Christian Bernard (MAMCO, Geneva); Curator: Natalie Viot (City of Paris). Associate engineers / designers: AR Theme Associées; Xelis, Paris.
Spiral Galaxy. 2012. Unique sculpture. Digitally controlled neon and associated electronics on aluminium panel with artist’s data programme. Location: Caves de Veuve Clicquot, Reims, France. Client: Veuve Clicquot (MHCS), Epernay, France.
Question? 2012. Materials: part 1: White Estremoz marble, Nero Absoluto black granite; part 2: steel panel, intelligent LEDs and associated electronics, artist’s data programme. Location: University Campus Suffolk, Ipswich, UK Client: UCS (University Campus Suffolk). Art consultant: Commission Projects, Suffolk, UK.
Kendrew’s Milestone. 2011. Memorial to Micro-biologist and Nobel Prize winner Sir John Kendrew. St John’s College, Oxford, UK. Client: St John’s College, Oxford. Materials: Carrara marble, lead inlay, resin inlay, stainless steel. Art consultant: Modus Operandi, London. Architect: MacCormack, Jamieson, Pritchard, London.
Language of Places (China). 2009. Wall painting. Materials: Watersoluble house paint. Location: Tang Contemporary, 798, Beijing, China. Client: Tang Contemporary. Curator: Katie Hill.
Moving World (Night & Day). 2008. Digitally controlled neon and associated electronics with artist’s data programme, glass, granite, stainless steel. Location: Terminal 5, London Heathrow Airport, UK. Client: BAA (British Airports Authority). Art consultant: Contemporary Art Society, London. Building Architect: Rogers, Stirk, Harbour & Partners (Richard Rogers Partnership), London.
Virtual World. 2008. Digitally controlled neon and associated electronics on aluminium panel, with artist’s data programme Location: New Street Square, London, UK Client: Land Securities. Art consultant: Art Source, London, Building Architect: Bennetts Associates, London.
Virtual World (Medals of Dishonour). 2008. Struck and enamelled silver. Commissioned by the British Art Medals Trust for the exhibition Medals of Dishonour at the British Museum and State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Collection: British Museum. Curator: Philip Attwood.
Superactive i2i. 2007. Remote hosted virtual world enabling multiple user online interaction and communication. Location: Somerset House, London. Engineers: Inventive Partners, AMT 3D. Client: Somerset House Trust, London. Curator: Somerset House, London. UK.
Folkestone : Boulogne, A Blind Date. 2008. Film commissioned for the Folkestone Triennial. Video (archived on DVD). Colour, sound. 19 mins, 25secs. Client: The Creative Foundation for the Folkestone Triennial. Curator: Andrea Schlieker.
Domain. 2006. Portland Stone. Location: Canon’s Marsh, Bristol, UK. Client: Bristol Harbourside. Curator: Tim Knowles.
Schroders Coda. 2007. Intelligent LEDs and associated electronics, mirror stainless steel, artist’s data programme. Location: Schroders, Gresham Street Headquarters, City of London, UK. Client: Schroders Investment Management. Art consultant: Tempest Radford.
Open Sky. 2006. Digitally controlled neon and associated electronics with artist’s data programme mounted on wall. Location: Dulles Jet Center, Washington Dulles International Airport, USA. Client: General Dynamics. Art consultant: Lisa Austin Associates, Washington DC. USA, Architect: Lehman, Smith, Mc Leish, Washington DC.
Langlands & Bell would like to thank Simon Beaugie, Andrew Turnbull, Richard Wilding, Peter White and all the directors and staff at Alan Cristea Gallery.
Photo credits
Published by Alan Cristea Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition LANGLANDS & BELL: INFINITE LOOP 27 April – 3 June 2017
Infinite Loop proofs laid out in the artists’ studio. Photo courtesy of Langlands & Bell.
Alan Cristea Gallery 43 Pall Mall London SW1Y 5JG www.langlandsandbell.com www.alancristea.com Interview © Harry Laughland & Langlands & Bell, 2017. Catalogue and Images © Langlands & Bell and Alan Cristea Gallery, London, 2017. All 24 prints in the Infinite Loop series were printed by Andrew Turnbull at Digital Print Studio, London, and proofed and published by Alan Cristea Gallery, London.
Photography of all Langlands & Bell Infinite Loop prints, Facebook, Menlo Park and Apple, Sunny Vale by Peter White, FXP Photography, London.
Huge construction site, office building Apple Campus II, architect Norman Foster, Cupertino. imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo. Langlands & Bell, Facebook, Menlo Park in production in the artists’ studio. Photo courtesy of Langlands & Bell. Langlands & Bell, Air Routes of the World (Night), 2002. Published by Alan Cristea Gallery. Installation shot of Langlands & Bell, The House of Osama bin Laden, 2003 at Tate Britain. Image © Tate, 2017. Photo courtesy of Langlands & Bell. Richard Hamilton, Five Tyres remoulded (portfolio), 1971 © Rita Donagh Hamilton, 2017.
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Photography of artwork in Commissions section: Thiery Bal, Steve White, Richard Wilding, courtesy of Langlands & Bell.
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ISBN 978-0-9955049-2-9