Are you not entertained? Robert Del Naja and Matt Clark on creating confronting, exhilarating live visuals
Over the past two decades, Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja and UVA’s Matt Clark have used live visuals as a canvas to make urgent statements on global crises, politics and power in the Information Age. Having consolidated this work with their pioneering low-carbon ACT 1.5 event in Bristol this summer, the collaborators sit down to discuss the themes of the show, using new technology to bring audiences into it, and the legacy it will leave.
Since 2003, United Visual Artists have been essential to the visual storytelling around Massive Attack’s socio-political commentary. In recent years Rob Del Naja’s creative relationship with Adam Curtis and the incorporation of his films have complimented the band’s desire to fuse contemporary cultural and technological touch-points, making Massive Attack’s performances all the more provocative and memorable.
Tom Frost: UVA’s work has become such a core element of Massive Attack’s presentation now. When you think of the next Massive Attack show, is the visual element of the performance often your first thought?
Robert Del Naja: As soon as the inclination to tour again came, I called Adam Curtis and asked him if he would be interested in developing some of the themes of our previous collaborations; by creating new films for a festival show, for a more nonpartisan audience. Around that time, Matt asked me to collaborate on an installation piece called Present Shock, which explored our 20-year obsession with information and power. The work is a manifestation of the ‘context collapse’ that defines our present moment, disrupting our sense of time, coherence, narrative and consensus reality. To design and integrate the two themes, we began planning the content of the show about eight months prior to the first gig.
Matt Clark: Last year, we asked Rob if he wanted to collaborate on a work for our 20th-year survey show at 180 Strand in London. The artwork we created, Present Shock, touches on aspects of the 100th Window show we worked on together in 2003, but with the addition of contemporary themes and technology driving it. It was important for me to start the show with this work, as our early collaborations with Rob were fundamental to UVA establishing itself as a practice.
How flexible is your approach to the visual show depending on where you perform? How important is this on a European tour, say, where political attitudes to the show’s themes may vary? Is this something you’re constantly re-evaluating?
RDN: The films and discourses within the show remain the same for different audiences. However, we’ve always worked with local translators and researchers to populate the narrative with region-specific information, news and politics; to keep the show relevant and to frame it in a more locational context. Icarus Wilson Wright, a video designer, has also been a brilliant collaborator, taking responsibility for the complex live manifestation of the visual show, the time code syncs and never-ending translation work. The global political landscape is always full of natural and unnatural contradictions. Alongside the examination of identity and individualism, we try to present anarchic superpositions.
MC: The project allowed us to reflect on all our work together over the years. It reignited our desire to expand on some of the concepts we have been interested in, particularly those related to the challenges we face as creative individuals in a seemingly more automated world.
"I’m always concerned with the band’s and the audience’s discomfort; that tension provides a rich area to work within” - Robert Del Naja
Do you ever concern yourselves with jarring people too much? Is there ever a point where visual provocation overtakes the need to entertain?
RDN: I’m always concerned with the band’s and the audience’s discomfort; that tension provides a rich area to work within. Since working with Adam, there have been many moments when visual provocations have dominated the entertainment, and they have been some of the most difficult and exhilarating to perform.
Are there any specific concerns relating to the visual presentation of the Bristol show?
MC: Our starting point was to create a sentient machine behind all the visual elements, giving the scenography the impression of agency. In one part of the show, we implement facial recognition software to scan the audience and make playful assumptions about their personalities, bringing them into the show’s visuals, which gets a great reaction. Some moments are disturbing and challenging to watch, but there’s a lot of humour, too. It’s quite an overwhelming experience!
RDN: There are no concerns for me — unless you factor in the underlying anxieties about playing in your hometown with experimental batteries for power!
This super-low-carbon ACT 1.5 event is our legacy show for Bristol. It’ll provide physical and planning infrastructure to ensure that all future events on The Downs won’t need to use high-polluting fuels like red diesel again. Implementing all the recommendations of the Tyndall Centre report, created for us by climate scientists and analysts, will be a pleasure.
That moment will feel like a massive relief. For years, we watched in disbelief as many promoters ignored the Tyndall Centre Roadmap to Decarbonisation — the only Paris 1.5 compatible plan in the live music sector — and instead hired their personalised sustainability teams to cherry-pick areas of emissions pollution that suit them.
During that time, an entire sub-industry of climate conversation groups, award ceremonies and initiatives has blown through millions of pounds of taxpayer cash and created jobs for consultants while achieving jack-shit. The ACT 1.5 event won’t cost the taxpayer a penny.
“I admire Rob and the band for taking such a radical visual approach to the concert experience. I can’t think of other bands who would dare to be so visually confronting in that kind of scenario” - Matt Clark
Can you explain any AI applications within the visual framework? And is the existential threat or potential of AI addressed in the show?
RDN: There are algorithmic programs running live on this version of the show. During our last interview with Crack Magazine in 2016, I declared a desire for the show to become an independent intelligence. It’s not quite there yet, but the show does display algorithmically generated news headlines and employs real-time facial recognition software and machine vision analysis. It’s a useful glimpse behind the curtain of the systems that ‘assist’ us, that we now coexist with.
Is the visual show intended to help people question? And, if there is an element of personal politics, is that okay?
RDN: There’s always been a massive amount of disingenuous behaviour in the creation and delivery of the show and in every editorial decision. The show is and was a critique of the Information Age, control, power, the rise of hyper-individualism, the rise of the populists, and the power of conspiracy to distort and divide society. The show is a perfect example of the paradoxical nature of the process.
In an age of political apathy, having such a charged live show bucks trends. Who else will carry this torch in the future, and do you care about political disengagement within music?
RDN: I actually think we are in an age of heightened political awareness, which has produced interrogations of power and equipped us with the means to be participants. But it also manifested the existential dangers of non-stakeholder propaganda — a lack of political education being exploited by bad actors everywhere.
MC: I admire Rob and the band for taking such a radical visual approach to the concert experience. I can’t think of other bands who would dare to be so visually confronting in that kind of scenario; it’s refreshing, and that’s why, after all this time working together, I still see it as an important thing to be a part of.
What else visually excites you both?
RDN: Anything provocative that has critical thinking behind it. Machine learning can be an exciting area to work on visually, but the term AI is an overused and oversold description for analytic, machine learning algorithms. Human culture is in danger of being diluted by a new generation of ‘prompt engineers’ who will become part of the platform delivery systems and define how music, film and art are produced. If unchecked, this will ultimately turn everything into a monocultural, bland pastiche.
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