Art

Under The Covers: Metahaven

We talk to the cutting edge design studio about their incredible work for rising star Holly Herndon.

Written by James Hines

7 min readPublished on 10.12.2016 · 18:58 UTC

With the release of her debut album Platform, Holly Herndon has staked her claim as one of the most important figures currently working in electronic music. It's the fitting culmination of years honing her singular skills as both a performer and crafter of sound.

But there is another area in which she has set herself apart, and that is with the visual element of her work. This has been down to her label's (RVNG Intl) go-to studio Will Work For Good, and more recently her collaborative work with one of the boldest design practices of the moment - Metahaven. The Netherlands-based international collective of designers has been regarded by the design world as a major forward thinking group for some time, but it is with the release of Platform, their first foray into design-for-music, that they will reach their biggest audience yet. We sat down with founders Daniel and Vinca to find out what makes Metahaven tick and what working with RVNG Intl and Holly was like.

Who and what is Metahaven?

Currently, Metahaven are Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden together with Anna Spierings, Monika Gruzite, Kees de Klein, Solveig Suess and Yee Jin Sha; respectively Dutch, Dutch, Dutch, Latvian, Dutch, Swiss-Chinese, and Malaysian. We are an always-evolving small tribe, or family, of graphic designers, researchers, writers, and makers of short films. Daniel and Vinca founded Metahaven in the second half of the 2000s out of a need for a practice that would allow, no, require research be part of design activity. In short, to pursue a parallel methodology of relentlessly visual and relentlessly content-intensive work.

Amongst designers Metahaven is regarded as bold and forward-thinking. How did the Metahaven visual language come about? What are the key design concerns for Metahaven?

Our visual language has its origins in an obsession with medieval art and Google images. The Bayeux tapestry, 70 or so metres long, has an occurrence of Halley's comet passing by - seen at the time as a sign from God. The fact that the tapestry documents this event, the passing of the comet, unrelated by common standards to the battle of Hastings, to us showed the importance of graphic design as a narrator of time and history (if that doesn't sound too pompous for the occasion). We are living in interesting times, and design can portray these by examining what happens in the world concurrent to the thing, person, or event that gets represented.

Who or what are the influences that have had the largest impact on Metahaven?

The influences on our work are many. The Swedish-Brazilian artist Oyvind Fahlstrom is one, Superstudio another. We also love Richard Hamilton. We are fond of Tarkovsky, Peter Greenaway, Lars Von Trier, Ingmar Bergman, Adam Curtis, Johan Grimonprez, Melanie Gilligan, Iman Issa, Katja Novitskova, Slavs and Tatars, and Simon Denny. Design-wise we are inspired by The Designers Republic, Ken Garland, 2x4, Deterritorial Support Group, and others, which is just naming a few, as there are so many studios now putting out great work. Musically our influences range from Monteverdi, Pergolesi, Rachmaninoff to Ustvolskaya and Reinbert de Leeuw, from Björk to Mayhem, Einstürzende Neubauten, Foetus, Fatima Al Qadiri, Laurel Halo, Kuedo, Autechre, Aphex Twin, and so much more, not to forget Holly Herndon.

Black Transparency installation at Bureau Europa
© Johannes Schwartz

Your work with Holly feels like people collaborating with similar concerns, and tackling the same subjects - identity, branding, info-sharing/communication, technology, the web. How did your partnership come about?

When Holly approached us in 2013 we began discussing the lead-up to the album and what sort of collaboration we should be having; that was really a discussion where a great common vocabulary began to unfold that made it natural to convene on many of the projects that since followed.

Do you find it difficult to create pieces of cutting edge design that will also speak to people who don’t necessarily have that fine-tuned design sensibility?

It's not so much about trying to make cutting edge design that’s consumable for mainstream-oriented audiences. The spin of a particular release, and its design, is way more important - the way that something ties in with how the system works and how people pick and share what they like. Since doing this project we've learned tons about how the music industry works and how its media congregate around rumors, signs of releases, little signs here and there; is that series of animated GIFs maybe the sign of a new album? Next question by any music journalist: WILL THE ALBUM BE NAMED "CALL"?. Things like that. Working with these news cycles in concert with amazing visuals is our dream, and one we have to work at. But we are a small studio engaged in very personal work. We're not a digital ad agency.

A record cover is a piece of commercial art. How do you make sure someone is going to want to pick up and buy a record cover you have designed? Have you approached designing record sleeves differently to your usual line of work?

For "Platform," we wanted Holly to be on the cover, which is already a choice for a certain measure or form of accessibility. She did not find it necessary, but we thought it so. The cover should not be too abstract, as this kind of hyperformal design in techno circles can come to mean that "it's purely about the music" in a way we wouldn’t want it to be. There is an artist, a voice. Then we made so many versions of what that record cover could be. These ranged from a kind of science fiction bombast that could have been for Celtic Frost, to space rock, to surrealism. Holly responded less well to the Celtic Frost!

Platform back cover

Early treatment for Platform

On the back of the Platform sleeve Holly’s head is stripped to the bone, giving it a slightly morbid x-ray feel. Perhaps it is a particularly invasive airport body-scanner? Why did you choose to do a portrait cover?

Ha, funny you read it as x-ray, while in fact this is the skull from Hans Holbein the Younger's painting The Ambassadors, where it is featured in extreme perspective anamorphosis. Brought back to its normal dimensions it fits perfectly on Holly's face.

We felt it had to be a portrait cover. Also it is such an important moment in her career, we want the record to succeed, so it isn't wrong if it feels a bit commercial, though what we consider commercial may be literally miles apart from what mainstream normal people think is commercial. Then, the skeleton—that is something about depth. Holly is a composer with a classical training. Her music is so layered and so are the emotions in it. This is not to say it's about death, but neither is the skeleton, necessarily. It is both structural - as it seems to reveal the underlying structure of the body - and an extreme surface, a treatment, a mask. We still love it. In fact, both designs were competing against each other for front cover and at some point we decided to run with both, the skull being the one on the back, so as to almost confuse front and back of the record, which now share very close family relations.

The artwork and video to Holly’s ‘Home’ release does a great job of making you feel like you are inside a computer, a voyeur looking out onto Holly, or the other way around. Was that the intention with the video?

The intention with the video was to do something with the NSA graphics that Edward Snowden leaked. We wanted these logos to rain across the screen like a crazy pattern, or curtain. Luckily this visual idea also worked with a double role of the camera, where Holly is being observed inbetween the instances when she sings. The camera was a bit like the NSA agent in the song; the algorithmic voyeur.

For all the Under The Covers in one place,

visit our dedicated homepage

Visit Holly's official site here

More of Metahaven's work can be found here.To check out Holly's labelmates visit the RVNG Intl site.

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