Facts are the Enemies of the Truth - Interview (2004)E Mare Libertas or Facts are the enemies of
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Facts are the Enemies of the Truth - Interview (2004)E Mare Libertas or Facts are the enemies of the Truth (1)
Warren Olds in conversation with Metahaven
Originally published in Ramp Magazine, Hamilton, NZ 2004
Download Pdf
The Principality of Sealand is situated on a former anti-aircraft tower in the North Sea, approximately seven nautical miles from the English coast. Warren Olds talks with Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden from the Meta Haven: Sealand Identity Project about their development of a visual identity for the mini-state.
Warren Olds
Lately I've been reading Philip K. Dicks final three books, which all originate from an experience with a 'pink light'. In them, he weaves a spiritual narrative across a number of religions: Judaism, Kabbalah, Zoroastrianism and Christianity. There are elements of fact but the result is a science fiction developed to explain his experience. How does this process of research and synthesis work for the Meta Haven project?
Daniel van der Velden
Haha, so you want to know what our 'pink light' was?
Well, I discovered Sealand through editing and designing a spread about it for Archis magazine. After reading a number of texts on their website I found they had called for submissions for a series of stamps. I thought it would be fantastic to surpass, in a way, the conventional assignments that graphic designers get, and instead work for a client like Sealand. The context would be so very different and many uncertainties would be introduced. The Jan van Eyck Academie has provided an institutional context to the identity research process, which is how Vinca, Adriaan Mellegers, Tina Clausmeyer and Next Architects became involved. The Principality of Sealand has shown a continuing interest in our identity campaign.
But you're asking about the 'pink light moment'. To stay poetic, like your question, it reminds me of a painting by Charles Demuth, 'I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold' which is based on a William Carlos Williams' poem The Great Figure (1921). It has been said that Williams' 'pink light' was observing a figure five on a passing fire truck and this also made its way to Demuth's painting. In 1963 pop artist Robert Indiana painted 'The Demuth American Dream No.5'. In this painting Indiana combined an echoing, psychedelic 'figure five' from Charles Demuth's original with his usual stars and circles. Perhaps Williams' 1921 poem marks the birth of American pop art, where a 'meaningless' signifier like a number on a truck, is suddenly the start of a rather psychedelic flight of fancy, a mystification. Sealand is also like that. It is difficult to determine what Sealand is about and Sealand - importantly - always tries to postpone the moment you will.
Sealand faces problems from two sides. On one side, traditional nation states are leaving less and less space for a country that's legitimate in its claim to sovereignty, but is viewed as a marginal, unstable and unwanted force. On the other side, Sealand has spawned a new category of 'micronations' who are attempting to reach a Sealand-like status without having acquired the same physical charisma and fame. In our opinion, Sealand should eventually come together with NGO's and become an issue-related nation state.
A lot of effort has been invested in commercial initiatives, and it is Sealands unique sovereignty that allows HavenCo(2) to provide a secure data haven through hosting a series of internet servers on the platform. We are exploring Sealand's cultural value, though, not its commercial value. The Meta Haven project is a kind of answer to these earlier commercial attempts that were dependent on the financial involvement of the Sealand royal family. We're operating quite independently from them. We're dealing with a country that is an experimental nation but nevertheless portrays itself in a very classical way, strictly fa ade. Designed in the 1960s, but made to look centuries old, their visual identity is an unresolvable paradox that you can't simply 'undo'. You can't just 'modernize' Sealand - that would be the most old-fashioned thing to do.
Vinca Kruk
Sealand's existing identity is their way of proving they're a country, even though i's signifiers don't have a practical purpose. The coins only have if they're collected, and the passport if it is checked.
D.
In a way, their approach is anti-historical. It denies events in recent history that have seen the corporate identities of country's evolve away from the autonomous 'state' being towards an amalgam of institutions, corporations and NGO's. But then, it's not so different from the new euro notes that depict fictional buildings, structures and bridges. If they had used a famous building from a real country, one European country might seem to be favoured over another. So the notes represent a generic architectural heritage, a history that doesn't exist.
V.
We are not trying to replace their identity. We're using Sealand as a kind of thought experiment in design. Looking at the ways Sealand exists outside of itself - by others writing and dreaming about it - and using that in establishing a new identity.
D.
Perhaps what Meta Haven attempts is a re-invention of heraldry - creating visual signs that embed narrative, myth and power. One of our thoughts is that Google could be seen as an oracle, at this moment in history, a kind of global subconsciousness. Google is a vital instrument for Sealand because Sealands myth is built through it, and this narrative, of course, is also uncontrollable.
V.
What is important for Sealand is only the number of hits you get when you search for 'Sealand' - not if they are true or false. Everything gives Sealand meaning, in a way, and that's also something we're using.
W.
For Archis magazine(3), the ROOM invites(4), and the Ford Taunus project(5) it seemed the design approach was to develop a strategy or framework for the content to operate within. In a way, this is architectural, and the identity becomes located in the process rather than the form. What's the design strategy for the Meta Haven project?
D.
One could say that graphic design has always been about creating order. The designer must create overviews, and order the information in a way that reduces the space for mistakes and confusion. Maybe now, in the light of the global information overload, 'ordering' things is no longer the primary way to deal with the excess of information. It would be interesting if a more search-based design strategy, through which one is not finding but searching, became a general key to understanding information. In this strategy, chaos would be accepted and even encouraged.
V.
The Meta Haven Project is unlike other projects in design where one is commissioned and negotiates with the commissioner towards optimising the design at a single, final, point of conclusion. We are not in that position, we're actually trying to create a utopian paper model for design - not unlike those in architecture.
W.
The project is more like a proposal?
V.
It’s actually more like a series of proposals. We consider each new piece we develop for the project a proposal, and by doing so we’re free to move on and change them at the same time. For us, this is really a new way of thinking about design - as something that doesn't need to be realised in order to exist
W.
Maybe it's more like an artist generating a body of work in their studio, making a selection and then proposing that selection to a gallery.
V.
Perhaps, but I think that's different though. The Meta Haven project operates within the same context as a design commission, only we don’t have a commissioner. The issues we address, as designers, are design issues – we just don’t try to rationalize the outcomes in a traditional design sense.
D.
The Meta Haven project is, perhaps, similar to the Ford Taunus Project in that it tries to connect with representation and visual memory as a phenomenon. However, with the Ford Taunus project the goal was more about analysis. For Meta Haven the goal is synthesis, and also finding new relationships between design and research.
In a way, design has been developing itself like cartoonism where one has to score immediately. There is a five second visual contact with the viewer - make your point - okay, next piece. Next piece. So, the designer is certainly not an author, but more like a stand-up comedian who shouts something and then goes off stage. Designers have learned to live with this limited attention span; this limited contact, and have started to use it as an argument against their own freedom. For Meta Haven, we've tried to create a luxury situation for ourselves where we aren't obliged to score immediately.
W.
I often read Robert Fisk's commentary about the Iraq war and in a recent piece (6) he writes about the previous British Invasion and their attempt to establish "democracy" in 1917. The point of his piece is that history is repeating itself and the same mistakes are being made. Are there any specific historical points of reference you have identified for the Meta Haven project? Within philosophy or the context of identity design?
D.
I'd say Archigram(7) and Superstudio(8) are reference points along with the city model proposed in the New Babylon(9) project. Although, I'm not sure about references in graphic design - it's probably not someone like Paul Rand(10). For me, the project also has an important connection with Versailles. The Palace of Versailles was erected as a logo system for France and used as a method of visually communicating its political power in Europe. What we're doing for Sealand is, in a way, what Versailles did for France.
W.
Maybe we could talk about the website and some of the images?
D.
We call our collection of proposals 'the jewel box'(11). We wanted to make everything downloadable, so that our content mixes with other representations of Sealand on the internet. Our aim is that an internet search for 'Sealand + philosophy' or 'Sealand + culture' will return the Meta Haven project at the top of the list.
V.
We avoid judging whether the images or information we find about Sealand are true or false. For instance, there's a link between Sealand and Gianni Versace where someone connected to his murder was in possession of a fake Sealand passport. The question of whether this person actually existed or had a Sealand passport is not important to us, we've just embraced that connection and located other images related to Versace.
We're currently working on a series of chessboards about Sealand. The playing squares have been filled with two alternating images as a way to express both positive and negative at the same time. In one example, the site of the Oracle in Delphi fills the white squares and dark thunderclouds fill the black Squares. An image of a tropical island airport combines with a 500 Franc Swiss banknote in another. The game of chess allows us to explore concepts of strategy, game-play and history in relation to Sealand. The classic chess pieces, the king and queen, also provide a connection with monarchy, and in our case the Sealand royal family.
D.
Our pieces also follow the same positive and negative viewpoints. On one side we have pearl necklaces as pawns, there are unicorns, fish, the Arc de Triomphe, the Tower Bridge. It's all victory - everyone's happy. And then there's the darkness. The pearl necklaces become computer cables, the unicorn becomes the Ferrari logo, the rooks are the Sealand platform, and another more generic looking ruin.
V.
Our process is both intuitive and rational at the same time. We see what one image means, it has a link, and that link identifies another image. By synthesising these images together into hybrid forms, they become 'Sealand'
D.
It's possible to view Sealand from two extremes. The first is to say: "Okay I can't verify anything personally but I totally believe in it as a real monarchy, something that exists". We consider this a hyper-real approach - a form of reality based solely on representation. If you believe in Sealand as a hyper-real phenomenon then, perhaps, you have become too much of a believer. The other approach is what we call the doom scenario - Sealand as an island of death; a bottomless pit for information-society, or the ultimate deception. With this dark vision comes the idea of losing belief in Sealand - that believing in it doesn't lead to anything, that somehow it's all fake.
Warren Olds is a graphic designer and artist who sometimes writes. He is responsible for designing Ramp Magazine, and half its editing (with Anthony Byrt). www.warrenolds.com
Notes
1 The latin ‘E Mare Libertas’ or ‘From the Sea, Freedom’ is the motto of the official Principality of Sealand. Two fraudulent representations of Sealand also exist, seated in Spain and Germany. ‘Facts are the enemies of the ‹Truth›’ is the motto used by the fraudulent german government and apparently it’s a quote from Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spanish author of Don Quixote de la Mancha. www.sealandgov.org vs www.principality-of-sealand.org
2 HavenCo is an internet hosting company whose servers are located on Sealand. Due to their location HavenCo guarantees them to be physically secure against legal action. www.havenco.com. Also see an article about HavenCo, published in WIRED magazine:
www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/haven_pr.html
3 Daniel has collaborated with Maureen Mooren on a number of graphic and editorial design projects. In 2001, they created a new communication and design approach for Archis - an independent magazine for architecture, the city and visual culture. www.archis.org
4 From 1999-2003, Daniel and Maureen Mooren collaborated as the
writers/designers of publicity for the Room artist-run space in Rotterdam. Their invitations embedded real information in fictional texts that were often hyperbolic and sometimes surreal. www.janvaneyck.nl/~sealand/room.html
5 Daniel undertook the Ford Taunus project while studying at the Jan van Eyck in 1996. The project sought to answer three questions about an image printed in a car annual from 1970: where was the photo taken; who was the girl; and who was the photographer. The results from the search were published in Issue 3 of dot dot dot magazine.
6 www.robert-fisk.com/articles403.htm
7 www.archigram.net
8 www.designmuseum.org/designerex/superstudio.htm
9 www.wdw.nl/ENG/text/projects/constant/fr_const.htm
10 This is a graphic designers joke. Paul Rand (1914-1996) was the 'Picasso of design', an iconic designer who developed 'timeless' corporate identities for IBM, CBS and UPS. www.mkgraphic.com/paulrand.html
11 www.metahaven.net/clipart.html
Warren Olds in conversation with Metahaven
Originally published in Ramp Magazine, Hamilton, NZ 2004
Download PdfThe Principality of Sealand is situated on a former anti-aircraft tower in the North Sea, approximately seven nautical miles from the English coast. Warren Olds talks with Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden from the Meta Haven: Sealand Identity Project about their development of a visual identity for the mini-state.
Warren Olds
Lately I've been reading Philip K. Dicks final three books, which all originate from an experience with a 'pink light'. In them, he weaves a spiritual narrative across a number of religions: Judaism, Kabbalah, Zoroastrianism and Christianity. There are elements of fact but the result is a science fiction developed to explain his experience. How does this process of research and synthesis work for the Meta Haven project?
Daniel van der Velden
Haha, so you want to know what our 'pink light' was?
Well, I discovered Sealand through editing and designing a spread about it for Archis magazine. After reading a number of texts on their website I found they had called for submissions for a series of stamps. I thought it would be fantastic to surpass, in a way, the conventional assignments that graphic designers get, and instead work for a client like Sealand. The context would be so very different and many uncertainties would be introduced. The Jan van Eyck Academie has provided an institutional context to the identity research process, which is how Vinca, Adriaan Mellegers, Tina Clausmeyer and Next Architects became involved. The Principality of Sealand has shown a continuing interest in our identity campaign.
But you're asking about the 'pink light moment'. To stay poetic, like your question, it reminds me of a painting by Charles Demuth, 'I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold' which is based on a William Carlos Williams' poem The Great Figure (1921). It has been said that Williams' 'pink light' was observing a figure five on a passing fire truck and this also made its way to Demuth's painting. In 1963 pop artist Robert Indiana painted 'The Demuth American Dream No.5'. In this painting Indiana combined an echoing, psychedelic 'figure five' from Charles Demuth's original with his usual stars and circles. Perhaps Williams' 1921 poem marks the birth of American pop art, where a 'meaningless' signifier like a number on a truck, is suddenly the start of a rather psychedelic flight of fancy, a mystification. Sealand is also like that. It is difficult to determine what Sealand is about and Sealand - importantly - always tries to postpone the moment you will.
Sealand faces problems from two sides. On one side, traditional nation states are leaving less and less space for a country that's legitimate in its claim to sovereignty, but is viewed as a marginal, unstable and unwanted force. On the other side, Sealand has spawned a new category of 'micronations' who are attempting to reach a Sealand-like status without having acquired the same physical charisma and fame. In our opinion, Sealand should eventually come together with NGO's and become an issue-related nation state.
A lot of effort has been invested in commercial initiatives, and it is Sealands unique sovereignty that allows HavenCo(2) to provide a secure data haven through hosting a series of internet servers on the platform. We are exploring Sealand's cultural value, though, not its commercial value. The Meta Haven project is a kind of answer to these earlier commercial attempts that were dependent on the financial involvement of the Sealand royal family. We're operating quite independently from them. We're dealing with a country that is an experimental nation but nevertheless portrays itself in a very classical way, strictly fa ade. Designed in the 1960s, but made to look centuries old, their visual identity is an unresolvable paradox that you can't simply 'undo'. You can't just 'modernize' Sealand - that would be the most old-fashioned thing to do.
Vinca Kruk
Sealand's existing identity is their way of proving they're a country, even though i's signifiers don't have a practical purpose. The coins only have if they're collected, and the passport if it is checked.
D.
In a way, their approach is anti-historical. It denies events in recent history that have seen the corporate identities of country's evolve away from the autonomous 'state' being towards an amalgam of institutions, corporations and NGO's. But then, it's not so different from the new euro notes that depict fictional buildings, structures and bridges. If they had used a famous building from a real country, one European country might seem to be favoured over another. So the notes represent a generic architectural heritage, a history that doesn't exist.
V.
We are not trying to replace their identity. We're using Sealand as a kind of thought experiment in design. Looking at the ways Sealand exists outside of itself - by others writing and dreaming about it - and using that in establishing a new identity.
D.
Perhaps what Meta Haven attempts is a re-invention of heraldry - creating visual signs that embed narrative, myth and power. One of our thoughts is that Google could be seen as an oracle, at this moment in history, a kind of global subconsciousness. Google is a vital instrument for Sealand because Sealands myth is built through it, and this narrative, of course, is also uncontrollable.
V.
What is important for Sealand is only the number of hits you get when you search for 'Sealand' - not if they are true or false. Everything gives Sealand meaning, in a way, and that's also something we're using.
W.
For Archis magazine(3), the ROOM invites(4), and the Ford Taunus project(5) it seemed the design approach was to develop a strategy or framework for the content to operate within. In a way, this is architectural, and the identity becomes located in the process rather than the form. What's the design strategy for the Meta Haven project?
D.
One could say that graphic design has always been about creating order. The designer must create overviews, and order the information in a way that reduces the space for mistakes and confusion. Maybe now, in the light of the global information overload, 'ordering' things is no longer the primary way to deal with the excess of information. It would be interesting if a more search-based design strategy, through which one is not finding but searching, became a general key to understanding information. In this strategy, chaos would be accepted and even encouraged.
V.
The Meta Haven Project is unlike other projects in design where one is commissioned and negotiates with the commissioner towards optimising the design at a single, final, point of conclusion. We are not in that position, we're actually trying to create a utopian paper model for design - not unlike those in architecture.
W.
The project is more like a proposal?
V.
It’s actually more like a series of proposals. We consider each new piece we develop for the project a proposal, and by doing so we’re free to move on and change them at the same time. For us, this is really a new way of thinking about design - as something that doesn't need to be realised in order to exist
W.
Maybe it's more like an artist generating a body of work in their studio, making a selection and then proposing that selection to a gallery.
V.
Perhaps, but I think that's different though. The Meta Haven project operates within the same context as a design commission, only we don’t have a commissioner. The issues we address, as designers, are design issues – we just don’t try to rationalize the outcomes in a traditional design sense.
D.
The Meta Haven project is, perhaps, similar to the Ford Taunus Project in that it tries to connect with representation and visual memory as a phenomenon. However, with the Ford Taunus project the goal was more about analysis. For Meta Haven the goal is synthesis, and also finding new relationships between design and research.
In a way, design has been developing itself like cartoonism where one has to score immediately. There is a five second visual contact with the viewer - make your point - okay, next piece. Next piece. So, the designer is certainly not an author, but more like a stand-up comedian who shouts something and then goes off stage. Designers have learned to live with this limited attention span; this limited contact, and have started to use it as an argument against their own freedom. For Meta Haven, we've tried to create a luxury situation for ourselves where we aren't obliged to score immediately.
W.
I often read Robert Fisk's commentary about the Iraq war and in a recent piece (6) he writes about the previous British Invasion and their attempt to establish "democracy" in 1917. The point of his piece is that history is repeating itself and the same mistakes are being made. Are there any specific historical points of reference you have identified for the Meta Haven project? Within philosophy or the context of identity design?
D.
I'd say Archigram(7) and Superstudio(8) are reference points along with the city model proposed in the New Babylon(9) project. Although, I'm not sure about references in graphic design - it's probably not someone like Paul Rand(10). For me, the project also has an important connection with Versailles. The Palace of Versailles was erected as a logo system for France and used as a method of visually communicating its political power in Europe. What we're doing for Sealand is, in a way, what Versailles did for France.
W.
Maybe we could talk about the website and some of the images?
D.
We call our collection of proposals 'the jewel box'(11). We wanted to make everything downloadable, so that our content mixes with other representations of Sealand on the internet. Our aim is that an internet search for 'Sealand + philosophy' or 'Sealand + culture' will return the Meta Haven project at the top of the list.
V.
We avoid judging whether the images or information we find about Sealand are true or false. For instance, there's a link between Sealand and Gianni Versace where someone connected to his murder was in possession of a fake Sealand passport. The question of whether this person actually existed or had a Sealand passport is not important to us, we've just embraced that connection and located other images related to Versace.
We're currently working on a series of chessboards about Sealand. The playing squares have been filled with two alternating images as a way to express both positive and negative at the same time. In one example, the site of the Oracle in Delphi fills the white squares and dark thunderclouds fill the black Squares. An image of a tropical island airport combines with a 500 Franc Swiss banknote in another. The game of chess allows us to explore concepts of strategy, game-play and history in relation to Sealand. The classic chess pieces, the king and queen, also provide a connection with monarchy, and in our case the Sealand royal family.
D.
Our pieces also follow the same positive and negative viewpoints. On one side we have pearl necklaces as pawns, there are unicorns, fish, the Arc de Triomphe, the Tower Bridge. It's all victory - everyone's happy. And then there's the darkness. The pearl necklaces become computer cables, the unicorn becomes the Ferrari logo, the rooks are the Sealand platform, and another more generic looking ruin.
V.
Our process is both intuitive and rational at the same time. We see what one image means, it has a link, and that link identifies another image. By synthesising these images together into hybrid forms, they become 'Sealand'
D.
It's possible to view Sealand from two extremes. The first is to say: "Okay I can't verify anything personally but I totally believe in it as a real monarchy, something that exists". We consider this a hyper-real approach - a form of reality based solely on representation. If you believe in Sealand as a hyper-real phenomenon then, perhaps, you have become too much of a believer. The other approach is what we call the doom scenario - Sealand as an island of death; a bottomless pit for information-society, or the ultimate deception. With this dark vision comes the idea of losing belief in Sealand - that believing in it doesn't lead to anything, that somehow it's all fake.
Warren Olds is a graphic designer and artist who sometimes writes. He is responsible for designing Ramp Magazine, and half its editing (with Anthony Byrt). www.warrenolds.com
Notes
1 The latin ‘E Mare Libertas’ or ‘From the Sea, Freedom’ is the motto of the official Principality of Sealand. Two fraudulent representations of Sealand also exist, seated in Spain and Germany. ‘Facts are the enemies of the ‹Truth›’ is the motto used by the fraudulent german government and apparently it’s a quote from Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spanish author of Don Quixote de la Mancha. www.sealandgov.org vs www.principality-of-sealand.org
2 HavenCo is an internet hosting company whose servers are located on Sealand. Due to their location HavenCo guarantees them to be physically secure against legal action. www.havenco.com. Also see an article about HavenCo, published in WIRED magazine:
www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/haven_pr.html
3 Daniel has collaborated with Maureen Mooren on a number of graphic and editorial design projects. In 2001, they created a new communication and design approach for Archis - an independent magazine for architecture, the city and visual culture. www.archis.org
4 From 1999-2003, Daniel and Maureen Mooren collaborated as the
writers/designers of publicity for the Room artist-run space in Rotterdam. Their invitations embedded real information in fictional texts that were often hyperbolic and sometimes surreal. www.janvaneyck.nl/~sealand/room.html
5 Daniel undertook the Ford Taunus project while studying at the Jan van Eyck in 1996. The project sought to answer three questions about an image printed in a car annual from 1970: where was the photo taken; who was the girl; and who was the photographer. The results from the search were published in Issue 3 of dot dot dot magazine.
6 www.robert-fisk.com/articles403.htm
7 www.archigram.net
8 www.designmuseum.org/designerex/superstudio.htm
9 www.wdw.nl/ENG/text/projects/constant/fr_const.htm
10 This is a graphic designers joke. Paul Rand (1914-1996) was the 'Picasso of design', an iconic designer who developed 'timeless' corporate identities for IBM, CBS and UPS. www.mkgraphic.com/paulrand.html
11 www.metahaven.net/clipart.html
