This Review was first published on New Elementary last year.

Neal Stephenson in Seveneves, his 2015 epic speculative novel of human survival following a catastrophic cosmic event – the destruction of the moon – describes the technology that allows the quick assembly of the space craft in terms of an element based kit language reminiscent of LEGO building.  In fact he explicitly uses the phrasing ‘LEGO-like’. On this hinges the premise that humanity will endure the worst of times through ingenuity and creative thinking, mediated through the limited resources and components of this restricted technological system.  It is an unusually positive assessment as to what our combined intellectual endeavours might achieve in an era often obsessed with the critical appraisal of our species’ actions and the gloomy prognoses that follow.

This same optimistic spirit runs through the selection of essays gathered together in Roy Cook and Sondra Bacharach’s newly edited book LEGO and Philosophy: Constructing Reality Brick by Brick.  The twenty-one studies that make up the collection are written by a host of new and established academics from some of North America and Europe’s best universities.  Broadly themed around the topics of creativity, ethics and rules, identity, consumption and culture, and metaphysics and maths, the aim is to cover a wide intellectual base, in an attempt to answer the question posed by Cook and Bacharach in their introduction: ‘how deep and profound could a little plastic building block be?’, and like Cook and Bacharach these essays resoundingly reply: ‘the answer is “very”!’

As a part of the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series the book adheres to a no-nonsense editorial style that favours legibility and accessibility; a rare thing in a field such as philosophy, which often excludes the casual reader.  Each of the studies here allows the philosophically uninitiated to dive into the arguments presented by their authors. Ideas are clearly explained and interesting observations succinctly and expertly arrived at.  Whilst still very much situating themselves in, and adding to, a wide range of academic studies, from the psychology of play to the analysis of popular culture, there is a place in each of these essays for the LEGO enthusiast to learn more about what, why and how their love of the brick operates.

From the opening essay, Mary Beth Willard’s ‘Constructing Creativity’ there is a sense that LEGO building improves and aids human experience by developing our potential to play and create.  Ward’s argument explicitly breaking down the myth that LEGO as a toy is good because it is creative, suggesting instead that it is the simplicity and effectiveness of the system that encourages creativity to develop, moving those who use it quickly and happily onto a path towards virtuosity.  LEGO bricks, she argues, are a highly successful tool, able to harness our imaginative potential by helping each of us to practice, improve and even master that uniquely human faculty of creative expression.

Michael Gettings in his ‘LEGO Ideas and Intellectual Property’ from the same creativity section of the book takes a very different angle to these questions – fan expectation.  From my own LEGO enthusiast’s perspective, and having read the online message boards for years, it is a marvellous experience to see the trained philosopher pull apart the pedants’ arguments that modifications to a LEGO Ideas project by the LEGO Group, so as to prepare it for market, qualify as a deceit or fundamental change of model.  In amongst the arguments that debunk this opinion Gettings again shows us something special about the LEGO brick’s capacity to generate originality.

As a sometimes writer on the philosopher Martin Heidegger – I teach various literary and aesthetic theories at Goldsmiths, University of London – Ellen Miller’s ‘Building and Dwelling with Heidegger and LEGO Toys’, appealed to both the philosophy and LEGO nerd in me.  The subsection entitled ‘Emmet as Existentialist’ eliciting a well deserved wry smile.  Her concluding statement though provided genuine food thought, noting that: ‘Dwelling and building in worlds of LEGO toys is one way to sustain the awe and wonder needed for authentic building and philosophising.’

Roy Cook’s own contribution to the collection ‘Ninjas, Kobe Bryant and Yellow Plastic: The LEGO Minifigure and Race’ shifts the focus away from play, to consider the political and social potential of LEGO creations.  By playing out the intended idealism of the racially non-identifiable era of yellow minifigures against the various flesh tones found in the post-franchise sets, Cook explores the illustrative capacity of the system of identify found in the LEGO minifigure.  Rather than suggesting that an earlier idealistic world of undifferentiated yellow smiling faces was in some way morally reprehensible, he argues that the complications generated by the confrontation of this simple ideal with the racial complexity of current franchise sets provides a forum for important questions regarding racial identification, social context and prejudice to be better understood and potentially confronted.

If one of the essays here could sum up the tone of the book, Sondra Bacharach and Ramon Das’ ‘LEGO Values: Image and Reality’ might be the best case in point.  Together they question whether the utopian and overtly positive social image the LEGO Group paints of itself is sustainable, via the well documented Greenpeace critical video made to highlight the company’s links to oil giant Shell. The answer comes back, that despite the problematic contradictions inherent in any multinational business operation, it remains too easy to malign the positive approaches made by the company and not hope that other toy manufacturers emulate the imperfect but aspirational approach that the LEGO group aspires to.

So whilst the LEGO Group and its products may not yet embody a utopian reality, in a world experiencing dark and troubled times, this book’s authors would seem to suggest that by playing, building and thinking with LEGO bricks we keep our utopian hopes alive. This book not only makes this point in numerous ways, it provides what all good research purports to do, it lays the foundations for future work.  To name drop my own blog, it sets the stage for building future debates.  If you have even the slightest inkling that something serious is going on in the LEGO world, something positive and potentially culturally transformative, then these collected essays provide no better starting place to for your own thinking.

LEGO collaborations bring the community to life; the bigger and more ambitious the better!  One such collective I’ve been honored to join and contribute to is the loosely termed ‘Private Club.’   Under the guidance of its brainchild Pico van Grootveld we have twice come together to present expansive collaborative space scenes rendered through his formidable photographic editing skills.  On the eve of the unveiling of the second of these mammoth endeavours, Building Debates plays host to an overview of the project and hear thoughts from Pico and a number of the other key collaborators about its creation.

A slice of fortune seekers trying to find their luck on Jupiter’s moon Europa. After the discovery of water under its icy crust, several investigated areas revealed the presence of ABS. Moments later… 

The completed Quest for Europa diorama can be viewed here.

I hand you over to Pico now to set the scene.

Project Origins

It all started when a group of Lego enthusiasts came together in a posh group aptly named the ‘private club’ over on Mocpages. Different folks of all ages from all over the globe sharing stories, asking questions, the usual stuff. One day in 2014 fellow builder Stephan Niehoff dropped a poll to see who’d be interested in a digital collaboration (here’s the original post).

So time passed and things became more polished through group conversation. The idea was expanded and a common theme of interest picked. The collaboration would revolve around different factions searching for the precious element ‘ABS’, or absinite.

The First Chapter: Mining Frenzy

The first chapter told the story of a mining frenzy that followed the discovery of the element. A collaborative build with a variety of creations that went from planetside bases, asteroid fields, mining ops, sector security to alien species and of course space pirates! The final tableau is on display here.

The Second Chapter: The Quest for Europa

After publishing, again some time passed and the second chapter was in the making. This time the real life discovery of water on Europa got things ticking. ‘What about an underwater world unknown to mankind, let’s explore!’. So again we made a roster and let everyone pick their spot.

With different layers in the grid, there was plenty of choice for everyone. Space, planet, planet crust, water, deep sea, sea bottom, examples of the layouts can be seen here.

We left the choice of build free so as to let creativity do its thing. All was possible from an exploration team to lurking creatures.

Builders Experiences

Following Pico’s account of the collaboration set-up, some of the key builders involved in the project shared their thoughts on the project.  Each providing their contribution to the project’s fantastical narrative and reflections on the creative project.

Pico Van Grootveld

Narrative: The Tequilatron agenda

As life thrives on planets over multiple quadrants, demand for spirits is high. The tequila serving syndicate has to keep the liquor pouring and the condiments a plenty. Whether it’s the growing of limes on blue planets or harvesting deep underground salt deposits on rocky ‘roids, the right equipment is crucial to get the job done right. Introducing the underwater model of the Roid Jumper, the Roid Diver can withstand higher pressures and is equipped the technology needed to source salt rich deposits.

Reflections on the build

With Tequilatron making a debut with the Tequila Tuk Tuk  in the Classic Space Pocket Money contest (an idea of David and David), the line developed along the way in several contests, games (Rutherford & Goldman’s D.A.2.) and collabs.

To keep things consistent and fitting within the storyline, I thought it best to stick with the lime and grey. I would see a modified Roid Jumper equipped to dive and mine in the deep. So the cockpit got fortified to whitstand high pressures, an arm was replaced by a mining laser and the top got a big lamp to lighten up the abyss. To add to the scenery, red ABS crystals were added as well as a strolling diver and marker buoys. The idea was to get the share of the resource while it was around. The divers would attach the full tanks to the buoys and release them to the surface, where logistics would pick up and ship. The whole logistic aspect as well as the defense of the precious goods are the themes I like most. The most fun, though, is to be had with the whole ‘bringing things together’. It’s a nice thought of having fellow builders from over multiple continents adding their creativity to a concept. While, in this case, real life logistics would get in the way, the digital collaboration type is just perfect. I really enjoy the different angles people take on a subject, each in their own respective and distinctive style. I have the honour of mixing it up and praying for an end result that puts a smile on everyones’ face!

Topsy Creatori

Narrative: The Sub design story

After the relaxation of ‘The Mining Frenzy’, the time was right for the first meeting of the Resources on Europa Strategy Team or REST, in the team’s favorite polished corner of their favorite posh bar, The Private Club. Team member, sister of Dame Darkla, and engineering genius, Wacky Wanda, attended the meeting after having recently been refreshing her knowledge of Platonic solids by scanning the web’s mathematical sites. As the meeting progressed and post meeting discussions continued, Wanda, armed with this refreshment of past solid learning, realized that a mining submarine in the shape of one such Platonic polyhedron just might be the design answer to small volume cargo packing of drilling submarines for transportation to Europa in cargo spacecraft. Wanda’s design lab, Technic Bulldog, quickly determined a cuboidal design would be the best. The drill sub was even built with a propitiatory exterior surface metallic membrane material featuring faced-centered cubic packing as opposed to body-centered cubic packing of its metallic atoms. And finally, Wanda wanted her dear friend and Astro-geologist, Marina Bleu, to pilot the first sub.

Reflections on the build

Just like Wanda, I too had just happened to have been refreshing my knowledge of Platonic Solids. So, when all of us Private Club friends made the decision to add another chapter to our ABS Space Resource Saga I had already been thinking about building a Platonic Solid with LEGO. Now, I wanted my solid to be, well, for lack of a better word… SOLID! I didn’t want to just use LEGO pieces for my polyhedron’s edges and vertices leaving its faces open like so many builders had been doing! So, I decided my contribution to our project would be a drilling sub that would have the shape of one of the Platonic Solids. Now I know my own limitations, so I decided to build a cuboidal submarine. Not having a large quantity of any one colored LEGO piece, I began by designing my structure using LDD. I found it was best to build up individual or 2 neighboring cube face structures from the outside in, then grouping them, and finally sliding the various groups together to form the ‘cube’. Of course, LDD gave me a great estimate for the number of LEGO pieces I would need. And naturally, the building process for the actual physical sub did not progress without some modifications and tweaks!

Matt Rowntree

Reflections on the build

My thought on the collaboration: Absolutely! Having built for Mining Frenzy and having a blast doing something so weird and out there, I couldn’t pass up another opportunity with this crazy crew. Having also worked on collaborations of all sorts as well, I find the freedom and constraints here more appealing to my own building ethos. Plus, not having to photo edit my work appeals to my laziness. Thank you Pico! But the added bonus of a master like Pico taking charge in that aspect is always worth it.
Building ideas: Well, I really only had only one vision as soon as I heard the idea. I grew up loving Kubrick and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was one of those films that couldn’t have been more perfect for me and my development at a critical moment. Turned me on to Clarke and from there I found many superb authors to really absorb and dive into. So when 2010: The Year We Make Contact came out, I was understandably so pissed off and disappointed in spite of having Scheider, Mirren, Lithgow, and Balaban on board. I’ll grant that the movie was not bad; however, I did not want any answers to the questions raised by 2001. The mystery was completely deflated. And because of that, I thought of the monolith as just another piece of junk. Then with the discovery of possible water hidden underneath the frozen crust of Europa, I couldn’t help but think of a pair of ice fishing aficionados lucklessly pulling one up from the depths.

The final build: I didn’t want just a simple pair of figures ice fishing, I wanted a couple characters having a REALLY crappy day ice fishing. I have them pulling up other “junk” and casting it aside in a pile. But I didn’t want just junk, I wanted other relics that would give the monolith an even lower level of importance. The Ark of the Covenant and a golden statue are parked back there along with a hull piece from a Helicarrier, a Wurlitzer, a miniature trireme, and a bunch of rare Lego pieces including a hanger, a metal Technic crane hook, a pen brick, the original Han frozen in carbonite, and of course a Scala potty. The toughest part of the build was figuring out to use white macaroni pieces to replicate the sides of a large fishing hole cut with an ice drill, which is sitting behind Phat Mac there. It’s a Stihl. 😉 The entire build was supported as it cantilevered out from the back by the lower half of the submerged monolith.
Matt’s brain not on drugs: The story behind the characters and what I envisioned while building. I’ll post a link to the story along with an edited main photo of my contribution after the big reveal. Don’t worry, it’s what you all expect. 😉

Caleb Inman

Narrative

So, there were some engineers on Earth who were married to biologists and artists, sports players and idealists of all sorts. And these engineers had a private design business, creating exploration vehicles for various space environments. The absinite craze launched the greatest adventure through space and time since the California Gold Rush. Everyone wanted a piece of the action. This small firm was no exception.

The engineers wanted to build something practical, competitive… And fast. They wanted to get in and out before the competition. Their wives and husbands wanted something creative. Something organic, and inspired. Because they all lived on Earth, the biologists said it should be modeled after an Earth-dwelling creature, even an extinct one. The artists wanted it to be aesthetically pleasing, creatively disproportionate. The sports players wanted it to be tough, and powerful, and memorable. The engineers just wanted something practical.

But a happy wife makes a happy life, and the lady engineers in the group decided their husbands’ ideas had merit. Putting their heads together, the engineers created MABOFA, or Mobile Apparatuses Based On Fearsome Animals. This wave of spaceships and mining equipment included rhinos, condors, snakes, wolves, sharks, and dinosaurs, to name a few. The idea was to intimidate the competitors and any other natural creatures that may be out in space, just hidden from view.

When Europa was announced as ABS-positive, the firm scrambled to create an aquatic mining scout. Expanding their line of shark-resembling products, the “Little White” was created. It served every purpose of the original creators except one: it wasn’t the most intimidating creature in the ocean.

Reflections on the build

Personal background: When I made this, I wanted to challenge myself in two ways. I wanted to create something organic, and I wanted to work in black, which is notoriously hard to photograph. I worked pretty randomly on different parts of this creation, not having too much direction until one piece of the manta or the shark sub just worked. I had recently purchased the skyhopper and wanted to reuse the windows. The dual-tone sticker made this the perfect opportunity, with the half-grey, half-white color scheme on the shark.

Both of these models were insanely fragile. Since creating this, I have become somewhat better at building sturdy models. It is still an area where I struggle, but I have not quite reached the level of despair I experienced when propping the shark up for the fortieth time. I’m pretty sure that I used thin black string to hold the sub up and edited it out in post-processing. Come to think of it, the entire MOC may have been suspended above the ground, in front of an evenly lit blue brick background.

This prompt was really fun and I was stoked to join this crew after their first collab. It is always exciting to work with great minds like those in this group, so I am honored to be included in this awesome adventure. The idea was very creative and surprisingly challenging. Pico is a fantastic editor, and if any behind-the-scenes information ever gets shared about what our team started with, you’ll understand what I mean, and just what he went through to pull it all together. It’s really marvelous, and has been a lot of fun.

Tom Remy

Narrative: LABCO News – The OPACIFIED Department on Europa

After having dried out the ‘roids in the Terpon Cluster, the Liquid ABS COmpany joined the party under Europa’s ice crust. Soon they realised that, whereas most of their competitors swept large amounts of absinite off the oceanic floor at massive operating costs, they could manage to obtain the precious material more easily. A certain species of giant worm thrived in the abyss, mainly feeding on creatures that live on the ABS-saturated oceanic floor. Soon the LABCO realised that the worm’s digestive system rejected crystals of pure absinite.

A daughter company was created to use the OPACIFIED technology on Europa, which stands for Organically Produced ABS by Catalyse of Inert Faeces Into Exploitable Detritus. The job, consisting of following the worms until the absinite, well… gets out, is boring and time-consuming, but avoids many of the jovian moon’s dangers. A diving bell signals to a little collector-submarine when the time is right. Unfortunately this particular event is followed by the creature’s lunch time, which can be a problem if the diving-bell can’t reach the surface… Those pesky fishermen!

Reflections on the build

Mainly an excuse to use my growing bowed slopes collection and my Duplo for the background, the build itself didn’t take too long and didn’t involve complicated techniques. Instead, I tried to remain simple, especially concerning the colours. I was looking for a good contrast between the water and  the submarines, and a camouflage pattern for the worm. But above all, I wanted to go on with this exciting and rewarding collaboration started with Mining Frenzy! As for chapter 1, Pico did a great job organizing the setting, and it’s nothing compared with the work he put into cutting, gluing, editing, lighting, fogging and in the end making something beautiful out of our bricks! Hope you’ll enjoy the end result as I did!

David Alexander Smith

Narrative: Ecological Preservation Investigators SUB

When the absinite rush began, the outer reaches of the solar system were put at serious ecological risk.  With leaking tequila and flying drill bits aplenty across Europa someone had to ensure the indigenous lifeforms were not disrupted.  And being the sensible people they were the ecologists designed a sea-horse modelled sub.  Why, because of course all life on Europa would be sea-horse shaped, and they really really wanted to fit in.  Whether this was true or not all the divers agreed that a sea-horse sub was a beautiful thing and more fun to drive than a Ferrari.  It now bumbles around the mid level sea keeping its sensors alert for any illegal mining activity.

Reflections on the build

The project allowed me to investigate a further creature based vehicle following on from my space dinosaurs.  With the underwater theme allowing to make a nod the Aquazone’s yellow and blue sets rather than the classic space grey and blue.  A fun and I believe unique build, I love how Pico has accentuated the yellow so that it pops right out of the centre of the final diorama.

David Roberts

Reflections on the build

The Europa collaboration: it feels like it started a long time ago, so where to start?

At first I was reluctant to get involved with the project.  I’m not very good at building things to a specification; indeed my entries into the Decisive Action 2 game on MOCpages were often about trying to subvert the categories.  For me Lego is somewhere I can be free of deadlines and the need to deliver quality, whatever the circumstances. Fortunately the “Private Club” is a very tolerant group of people, with a fairly relaxed schedule.  The joy of a virtual collaboration is that there is no external deadline of a show that everybody has to be ready for.

I was also worried that mine would be the only digital creation amongst the real bricks.  I render things on my old, currently disintegrating laptop. Modern standards are stunningly photo realistic but not mine!  Again the group was very welcoming and understanding that I don’t live with my bricks for 5 months of the year. I think it also speaks of Pico’s skill that all of the different builds and especially lighting setups have been so well mixed into a whole.  

The longer I’ve been involved in the Lego community, the more I’ve come to appreciate the skill of professional designers such as Pico.  A lot of what I build is all about shape and colour and pattern: abstract sculptures that have engines attached so that people accept them as spaceships.  However, when I look on Flickr at the models and presentations of people who work in the graphic design world, it often makes me wish I’d trained in something like that.

After all of my dithering, I was one of the last to join the project.  I wanted to crack on and get something built, as I didn’t want let my friends down and a busy working period was coming up.  Pods. I like pods. The pods in 2001: A Space Odyssey have always fascinated me. Either their shape or the way that they moved or perhaps it was that one of the astronauts was called “Dave”.  People have commented that my pod at the bottom of Europa’s ocean looks like a space pod and I did revisit and modify the design in real bricks in the first of my SHIPwreckers models, in SHIPtember 2016.  Yellow was the obvious main colour, as that seems to be the colour of most submersibles and would send a visual cue. Red was for high-vis and breaking up all of the red and adding a bit of contrast. I used a lot of 3675 3×3 corner slopes on the pod.  When I came to make it real bricks these were very expensive on Bricklink and if I’d realised, I wouldn’t have used so many on the submersible. I do like my virtual builds to “work” in real life: structurally and financially!

So thank to everyone in the group but especially Stephan for kicking it off, Pico for wrangling the images and David Alexander Smith for co-ordinating the written part.  It’s been a brilliant thing to have been part of again.

_____________________________

Thanks first and foremost to Pico for making this happen, and to all the other collaborators who added to the fun and creativity.  See links below to visit their individual pages.

– Topsy Creatori

– Locutus666

– Marc Edge R Unde

– David Roberts

– David Alexander Smith

– Caleb Inman

– Nick Barrett

– Stuart Lucas

– Matt Rowntree

– Tirrel Brown

– Tom Remy

– Stephan Niehoff

– Pico van Grootveld

LEGO creations are three-dimensional constructs, or at least this is what popular opinion suggests. But of course there are the mosaic builders, resolutely committed to the pixilation and creation of the two-dimensional image. And then there is a third way, a way of building that last year got my creative juices flowing. A way of building on the liminal edge between dimensions: a way of building I decided to call relief plate building.

 

I had been building in two-dimensions for some time, but had wanted to find a new way of creating an image which activated the same creative choices that I used when painting. An ability to block in planes of colour, associate fields of brick against one another, quickly describe space through pattern, affect texture in two dimensions and ultimately reject ordinary spatial representation.

Step forward the humble plate! One of the most important and un-sung heroes of the LEGO building system. I had boxes and boxes of the elements, which were normally used as structural, or as it were back-office jobs, in my builds. If I could bring them centre stage they might achieve the sort of visually diverse work I wanted to make.

I started with an experiment that used the wide array of angled plates in the LEGO system. By overlaying and offsetting these I started to explore angles and shaped patches of colour not normally achieved by the LEGO system’s fixed geometry. It became an experimental exercise in the generation of these shapes, and in doing so I realised an exciting secondary result of working in this way. As plates are layered, a depth similar to that found in relief sculpture was formed.

This sense of partial depth formed in the image drew the viewer’s eye into the work. Recognising the individual elements used to create the piece, whilst similarly immersing the viewer into the rhythm the elements expressed in their patternation. There occurred a way of hypnotically engaging the viewer; letting them follow the granular construction of the work, whilst simultaneously discovering the overall image in this movement.

It was the way into building abstract LEGO creations I had been searching for. A process that resisted seeing a LEGO model as a representation of a thing, and instead opened up a playful visual journey for a viewer through the pattern and forms of the bricks themselves.

Several more pattern-based abstract images followed.   In these I started to employ new strategies such as the bending of forms by finding new angles in the offset rotation of elements on their studs. Arabesques started to show up in the works; and with this came playful references to Art Deco and Bauhaus art movements.

As always, eager to explore the potential of this new way of working, I moved on to more literal image creation, although still with a knowing playful nod to its flat form. A plate mounted fish and a graphic robot being two of my favourites.

But it was the breaking of the traditional spatial representation in bricks that had really piqued my interest. At last a chance to explore the symbolic realms of visual creation I had been mining in my painting for years. These new works aligned with the painting experiments of the twentieth century and for me at last started to resonate the uncanny and emotive concerns I had wanted to explore in LEGO.

So plate building has opened up a new space for me to explore, one that I hope will take my work on to new and uncharted waters. And so begins the work in developing the scale and scope of these pieces, ready to be shown at a LEGO convention in the not too distant future.

Last year I wrote a short article on the issues of building abstract LEGO creations. What happens when you try to use LEGO elements in a non-representational way, and in doing so does it tell us anything more about the way LEGO operates as a creative language?

Having set out a series of arguments about this, I decided to enlist the help of several talented builders to test my theses in a practical way. Here is what they came up with.

Shannon Sproule
Shannon is a superb builder of the most unusual and innovative space creations as well as being an accomplished artist in more traditional mediums. He approached the challenge of building in the abstract form from a symbolic angle, creating three fascinating comments on social/group dynamics, love and the construction of the self. You can find more of Shannon’s work on his Flickr pager here.

Punish/Protect

A rectangular object has a binary nature: either it is standing erect (implying strength) or laying prone (implying placidity). We see a group of erect objects surrounding a prone object and questions are posed to the viewer: is the group protecting the lesser object from danger or encircling it with intend to harm whilst it is alone? Does the viewer identify with the reposed or with the group?

Romeo and Juliet

A beautiful object emerges from a nest of angry thorns. The central object represents the ill-fated lovers Romeo and Juliet, white symbolising the purity of their love for one another. A ragged divide splits the object in two, while the thorns on opposing sides (representing the two feuding families), shot red with hatred and adorned with metallic talons, scrape and gouge at one another, oblivious to the broken jewel in front of them.

Components of the Self (moving through space)

Here I am contemplating the ingredients of the Self. The light bley spine represents our body. It is the basic frame/chassis that the higher elements are further built upon. The white platform in the centre (the brain) serves as a foundation or growth medium for the Unique Attributes to affix to. These elements (in medium azure) equate to our many and curious unique traits, acquired skills and collected memories.

So the Self is the sum of the particular combination of its parts. All ‘Selves’ are unique and all have inherent value; though the scaffolding may be large, small, damaged or not, curved or straight, etc, the Unique Attributes continue to grow.

Tom Remy
Tom has made his name in the fan community building amazing portraits as well as super-realistic objects, and a whole host of space designs. Breaking from his normal approach, he tackled the challenge through a focus on constraints and building techniques. You can find more of Tom’s work on his Flickr page here.

Kaleidoscopic Rose

This piece experimented with a limited amount of LEGO elements as a way to induces an interesting creative process. I gave myself three constraints: 1) to use only transparent elements, 2) to push a little further the well known “brick/rod/brick” curved-wall technique, and 3) to achieve something with a radial symmetry.

With all that, I ended up with only one satisfying shape and here it is. This is pure geometric abstraction, and the shape is the fruit of its own internal logic, without any secret meaning or intention.

One More Dimension

My second attempt took a completely different approach: this piece is built with conventional techniques. It depicts a pair of two-dimensional paths that have to painfully break into a third dimension in order to connect.

Lego is an inspiring medium for this kind of stuff, because it provides very rigid and regular structure and palette; but I had to make it smaller than intended due to parts limitation.

Untitled

My third piece started with no plan or purpose. I was just feeling the colours and working with them in a basic mosaic format.

Tim Clark
Tim is one of the premier science fiction builders in the community, using detailed greebling to decorate huge spacecraft. For this challenge he took these skills and techniques and turned them to the task of abstract image building. You can find more of Tim’s work on his Flickr page here.

A Violent Intelligence

To be honest, when David first presented me with this challenge, I didn’t expect that it would be particularly challenging. Sometimes, when I feel my creativity has been stymied, I may pull out a large plate and build random details, or ‘greebles,’ just to tinker and explore different effects that I haven’t previously considered. In fact, I have, in the past, built an entire MOC based on just this concept. Point is, this kind of work is right up my alley.

With this MOC, however, I wanted to submit something that has the look of what was certainly crafted by my fingers, but with an aspect to which I’ve never given much thought. So I decided to build what I truly love: A science-fiction flavored piece, but with a tenuous marriage to a theme that I tend to shy away from: absolutely anything organic. I didn’t want to introduce much colour to this work, fearing that it would draw too much from the form and intention of the finished product, so I kept the organic components black. When the piece was filled in, I decided the composition was a bit drab, so I added a few splashes of yellow.

A very short time into this build, although it was never my goal to allow the work to be a realistic depiction of any singular thing, I began to feel that what was unfolding before me was a mechanical establishment of some variety which had been subverted by a life-form defined only by its instinctual survivalist tendencies. My initial reaction was to abandon my progress as I saw it starting to take on a bit too much personality, almost to the point of identity, but rather than combat this outcome that I probably could have predicted if I gave it even a second’s contemplation, I embraced it and allowed it to continue to take shape to completion.

I discovered that what I hadn’t previously considered to be a challenging undertaking, indeed had its own set of hurtles. Normally, when I’m adding greebles to a work, the task begins with defining parameters, then filling in the area with details that give the impression of mechanics, and I feel that the most effective greebles are pressed into a recessed area. In this case, the parameters are the borders of the very work itself, forcing me to stretch what is usually confined to a tight space, and all the detail of this work is above the frame, making it appear more like a circular section cut out of a whole. There is also the aspect of having to repress my need to give the viewer, (even if that viewer is me), an identifiable piece.

What I found to be the most trying aspect of this experiment, though, was having to decide that it was finished.

Despite the fact that I think it’s a bit more than strictly nonrepresentational, I’m actually pleased with the result. I have entitled the piece, ‘A Violent Intelligence.’

David Roberts
David has merged irreverent humour and expert engineering experience to create his own unique take on the LEGO space universe. These same skills were utilised for this experiment. You can find more of David’s work on his Flickr page here.

Untitled

I made the black wall because I had a lot of the bricks and I like the pattern, texture and the way that the bricks attached to each other, on their corners. The yellow ball was an experiment with techniques but I like how it goes on the black background. The red card behind was a conscious choice.

As with so much of what I build, it’s about colour, pattern, texture and shape. A lot of my spaceships start as shapes or patterns and are really just abstract ABS sculptures that happen to have rocket engines and pilots in order to make them socially acceptable to the Lego cognoscenti on Flickr (honest!).

Caleb Inman
Caleb is an innovative builder with several strings to his bow. Most notably his experiments in portraiture have shown some truly innovative lateral piece usage, which always result in stunning creations. The only builder to utilise LDD, he ran with the automatic building aspects of abstract creation. You can find more of Caleb’s work on his Flickr pager here.

ABStract

I presented this build through a pretty simple edit, and I can’t decide if I like it or not. It’s meant to look harsh, but the simplicity might work against it.

I think it is about as abstract as possible, since I had very little direction or intention while building it. I let my inner sense of connections and creativity direct how I built, following from a vague idea in my head (and sketch I made on paper beforehand).

It remains somewhat of a novelty to see a LEGO creation that isn’t representational; you could spend a long time searching and still only turn up a handful that can truly be called abstract. Are LEGO creations predestined to be models of something, and if not, what does it take for them to shed this proclivity for representation?

Nathan Sawaya in his The Art of the Brick^[i] exhibition explores some of the issues relating to the representational capacity of LEGO bricks. By taking a selection of the most famous pieces of work from the history of art and rendering them in brick form he challenges the line between the authenticity of the fine arts and artworks made from LEGO bricks. The process becomes even more pointed when he chooses a painting like Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss^[ii], a work widely regarded as paving the way towards the development of abstract art in the 20th Century. If Sawaya’s recreation in bricks is making a representation of something supposedly abstract, does it negate Klimt’s original process of abstraction?

 

The critical significance of brick-rendered representations of abstract art is expanded further in another of Sawaya’s creations from the same exhibition. By taking Marcel Duchamp’s notorious Fountain^[iii] a “ready-made” artwork that constituted the placement of an actual urinal in an art gallery, Sawaya intervenes in the game that the original plays. Duchamp’s ready-made artworks have been both celebrated and reviled by critics for their alteration of the art landscape. Ready-mades ushered in an era where selection and presentation of ideas challenged that of the artistic craft of representation that preceded it. Fountain issues a challenge to its viewers to elevate it to the status of an artwork. If we accept that the viewers’ power to name an everyday object “art” becomes in actual fact the artwork for Duchamp, it creates a trap for its audience. The urinal must always remain “not-art”, otherwise the process of transformation cannot take place. To take Duchamp’s Fountain seriously, which it is obvious that Sawaya does, we have to find another strategy other than that of giving it the name “art”, or fall foul of the snare that has been laid for us. This is where Sawaya finds his stride, in that the reconstruction of Fountain as a model comments both on this conundrum as well as creating a new artwork; Fountain is an artwork because it inspires new artworks. Sawaya, in his confrontation with Duchamp, achieves a rare creative win: the coup de grace coming in the form of his brick-built rendition of Duchamp’s “R. Mutt” signature which gave pseudonymous artistic verification to the work, but now exceeds forgery as an original creation in its own right.

The broadsheet reviews of Sawaya’s exhibition often reduced its value^[iv] to that of novelty and spectacle, but for me his engagement with both the history of art and the innate representational potential of LEGO bricks suggests that they have overlooked the subtlety of the intellectual thinking behind his staggering building skill. It also provides a springboard for thinking further about the challenges of building truly abstract LEGO artworks.

Perhaps Sawaya’s highlighting of the pure representational power of LEGO bricks asks us to think what would need to occur to suspend this power? The art critic and theorist Clement Greenburg attempted something similar when he tried to define what within painting could escape its representational potential – even its own signification as paint. Coining the term “post painterly abstraction” in his 1964 foreword to the exhibition of the same name^[v], which featured work by artists like Ellsworth Kelly,  he suggested such a project to be possible. The term was used to define those works where the brush marks and expressive nature of paint was removed, along with representational content, to leave canvases that advocated pure colour, graphic line and the other formal aspects of a composition. For Greenberg this approach provided a unique clarity, freshness and openness.

The question is, can a LEGO creation follow this line towards pure abstraction? Is it possible to remove the quality of a LEGO brick from a LEGO artwork? We find a problem when we attempt this and reduce a brick-built model to its most basic components. When you thin paint out and apply it flat and evenly, it suspends its fluid oil based origins and becomes, for the viewer, pure blue or green or grey. Yet, when you reduce the LEGO artwork to a pile of bricks, each brick remains an object in its own right – a LEGO element. A 2×4 red LEGO brick is never reduced to the qualia of red (the pure sensation of colour), always remaining instead a plastic building block. Like Duchamp’s urinal a LEGO brick remains itself and not an abstract idea such as a colour or shape, precisely because it always announces itself as something that can be transformed into a representation of something else.

This is realised when a LEGO builder tries the same exercise as an abstract colour field painter who tries to present the contingent quality of a colour in a single-toned painting. The LEGO artist who tries to build an expression of the brick ends up, as in the case of Luc Byard’s Self Fulfilling Prophecy^[vi], building the medium with the medium. Byard claimed that by making LEGO bricks from LEGO bricks he was evidencing a non-artistic and pointless exercise; that for LEGO bricks to be “art” they had to represent something else other than themselves. However, the piece fails to be “non-art”, working more as a comment on the inescapable representational power of the form, producing something akin to the graphic painting of a brush stroke by the pop artist Lichtenstein^[vii].

 

However the brick-built brick, unlike the painted brush stroke, surpasses its status as comment. As LEGO bricks are enlarged, they remain no less LEGO elements, as is evidenced in big building projects where bricks made from other bricks are used to scale up a model from a smaller version. In seeking to reduce the LEGO brick’s representational power to a representation, its functional application remains active.

All of which leads back to what might be an obvious fact about the LEGO System: that it is just that, a system. In fact one could say that bricks are words in the LEGO building language, which reiterates a point I have made elsewhere^[viii]; that the LEGO System is best understood as a language. Once recognised as such it becomes clearer as to why it proves difficult to use it to create truly abstract or non-representational models.

Languages are essentially linked to a capacity to construct meaning. Music, painting and sculpture have a figurative quality: a material presence we might think of as sound, colour or the contingency of marble or clay. Whereas they allow us to feel rather than rationally understand them. LEGO artworks are less well equipped to do this, instead inviting us to understand according to the way they are made from individual elements.

Despite an initial similarity at the surface level between a LEGO artwork and a sculpture, it shares more in common with poetry. It requires the physical grammar of associating – literally clicking together – semantic elements. Just as is the case in verbal or written language, the meaning or usage of any given word is not irrevocably set and is free to be revalidated in the context of its use: metaphor being the obvious way of achieving this. LEGO elements share this innate capacity for analogy with language. A “window brick” is only ever a window as long as it is used as such; it might equally be used as a door, an eye or part of a spaceship’s fuselage. Sometimes, in the case of a builder like Colin Hemmen^[ix], it is all of these things at once.

Yet language can challenge its representational tendency when it carries out experiments with its structure. As is evidenced in the experiments of modernist literature and poetry, the unexpected and often incorrect pairings of meanings combined with unusual rhythms, reductions and repetitions can create new abstract forms of expression; the grammatical experiments of Gertrude Stein or the reduced form of late Samuel Beckett being exemplary cases.

LEGO creations, if they are to achieve a similar development into the non-representational, will need to understand and challenge their grammatical form in a correspondent way. This is often seen unexpectedly at the point where builders forsake traditional building aims and explore new techniques. LEGO bricks are designed to fit together in a set of standard ways dependent on the placement of studs, hinges and clips, but with the use of repetition and subtle placement of elements in ways that push the bricks beyond their original use, new connections can be made. A creation can be developed in this way that appears to challenge the rules of building, making straight bricks bend and non-connecting elements tessellate.

Richard Selby’s Spiral^[x] is a case in point. As a building experiment it uses the generation of internal forces to create a curved tension that in turn produces an elegant abstract form. With the addition of a carefully aligned colour blocking technique to highlight its dynamic nodes, the model enforces a self-referential explanation of itself.

Similarly when a builder like Katie Hall explores a process such as mosaic building^[xi], these experiments generate complex abstract patterns. By ignoring the necessity of snapping elements together, the perfect alignment of angles can be exploited in a manner that is at once rebellious in its breaking of the traditional grammatical rules of LEGO building whilst simultaneously exaggerating the beautiful ratios and angles inherent in the pieces.

What both Hall and Selby’s works reveal is that by focusing in on building technique a LEGO artwork can divert our expectations away from what it represents by letting its technique become its content.

However an issue arises from the uses these new techniques are put to. Whilst an abstract form is created in these processes, the implication is that they are being developed merely to further representational building. One can’t help thinking that Hall’s mosaics should be used to embellish the interior of a LEGO building. Similarly, the experimental bending of bricks by Selby could be used to build all manner of representational models that require a curved structure.

This transition from pure abstract experiment to representational expression can most commonly be seen in the building that takes place in a “brick pit”: a regular activity at LEGO shows where the public are provided only with the 2×4 brick in a single colour, but in vast quantities. The limited range of pieces encourages abstract approaches to building, with people tending to make according to the abstract rules of repetition and pattern construction. However, as the models come to fruition, often without intention they result in architectural tropes. The patterns become windows; the rows of bricks become towers; the pyramids become pitched roofs. Once more the representational nature of bricks discloses itself.

The component that is perhaps missing in all of these works is an idea of an image; that when pushed the grammatical structure of LEGO building can open up something poetic, unexpected and unique outside the frame of us becoming more sophisticated users of the LEGO language. Michael Brennand-Wood’s^[xii] relief The Search for the Lost City of LEGO, produced as part of the 1988 show The Art of LEGO^[xiii], achieves just such a poetic coherence. Here, an unusual language is used where bricks are selected as individual elements and layered along with intersecting twine, familiar in Brennand-Wood’s textile works, not so much as to make a whole as a texture. The result, much like a work of abstract expressionist painting, provides a realm where the eye scans and recognises individual elements, but ultimately is concerned with an encounter through the many visual paths that the linkages in the work make. A yellow ladder literally leads the eye to a red beam or grey cog, and the excitement is in the signposting of these connections through the rhythm and repetition of the pieces. This scanning instantly seems familiar, in that it emulates the scanning of words as we read. In this way the work resists its utilitarian absorption into the canon of technique, instead standing alone as an abstract image, a self-contained visual journey and a work of art.

If Brennand-Wood reveals the poetic and intuitive art of placing bricks together, a builder like Arthur Gugick^[xiv] channels another aspect of the LEGO language: its fidelity to the logic of mathematics. Exploiting the ratios and geometric associations which are foundational to the connective potential of LEGO pieces, he uses these basic rules to generate  more complex patterns which we read aesthetically as interesting non-representational compositions. Again an image is formed which resists direct representational focus, channelling instead the fundamental of logic of the LEGO brick itself.

What qualifies a LEGO work of art as being successfully abstract is its ability to present the language of its construction as a site for contemplation, and not a technique to be learnt. Often to achieve this you need to take the work out of the context of representation and model building. This can be seen in a commissioned work like the one built by Rana Begum for the Surbiton Health Centre^[xv]. The work consists of a series of large modulated colour panels built in relief. Acting as architectural detail within this medical environment, the pieces replicate the flow of the designed spaces, but also entice viewers in this space to see in these abstract forms the human scale of the hand that clicked each brick together. This reveals a further aspect of the LEGO language; what at first seems to speak a general abstract language of colour and form in fact echoes a scale and form redolent of the human body. In the surgery surroundings, this nod to the human scale within the formal language of LEGO building mirrors the connection we find between the language of the medical sciences and ourselves as individual patients.

The notion of the abstract form in LEGO creations, as shown in Begum’s work, are of a very special kind. They link the logical connections necessary to an understanding of a system to an embodied way of making and interacting with the world.

With this revealed, perhaps we can say more about the LEGO mosaics destined for the interior décor of a minifigure’s house or palace. In these cases, where the mosaic becomes the geometrically designed floor in a LEGO house – an artwork built for minifigures – is it not just another form of the panelled walls of Begum’s health centre installation? With a wink, LEGO bricks seem to inevitably turn us back to representation. The joke is made complete in a work like Art Gallery by Melissa Cabral (LEGO Super Junk)^[xvi]. In this case the representation of the human encounter with the abstract artwork is rendered at a minifigure scale, remaining both an abstract artwork and a representation of the encounter with the abstract work.

Abstraction in the case of LEGO building is a hard-won aim, and as such it necessarily sits alongside an ever-present power to represent things. However, perhaps because the abstract LEGO artwork must always confront its own nature as a model-making medium, it is to be considered as having a privileged position as a form truly able to comment on what it means to be non-representational. It is this challenge which produces the rare occasions of abstract wonder we find in LEGO works such as Hall’s, Begum’s, Gugick’s, Selby’s and Brennand-Wood’s. No doubt LEGO artists will go on to develop the boundaries of what can be built by continuing these fascinating projects that seek to abstract the brick.

Endnotes

^[i] Nathan Sawaya’s The Art of the Brick has toured to international acclaim since 2007. Information relating to the show can be found on the artist’s website: brickartist.com

^[ii] Klimt, Gustav, The Kiss, 1907

^[iii] Duchamp, Marcel, Fountain, 1917

^[iv] See for example: Jonathan Jones, ‘Bricking It: Is Lego Art?’, Guardian (2014): gu.com/p/4xz56/sbl

^[v] Post painterly Abstraction, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1964

^[vi] Luc Byard posted this creation on MOCpages in 2012 as an open discussion piece for the community. You can read the conversation it generated in the comments thread here: http://www.moc-pages.com/moc.php/311343

^[vii] Lichtenstein, Brushstroke, 1965

^[viii] See my 2015 blog article, The Structural Language of Lego: http://www.buildingdebates.wordpress.com/2015/04/16/the-structural-language-of-lego-a-short-observation/

^[ix] See Colin Hemmen’s Instagram page: instagram.com/colinhemmen

^[x] See Richard Selby’s Flickr stream: flickr.com/photos/richselby

^[xi] See Katie Hall’s blog article on mosaic building: http://www.mosaicbricks.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/cheese-slope-mosaics-tutorial.html

^[xii]   Michael Brennand-Wood, is a lecturer, curator and artist. He is best known for his internationally recognised and groundbreaking textiles work. Examples of his work can be found on his personal website: brennand-wood.com

^[xiii] The Art of LEGO was a 1988 touring exhibition of the UK envisioned by Steve Brake

^[xiv] See Arthur Gugick’s Flickr stream: flic.kr/ps/a7ZgW

^[xv] See Rana Begum’s personal website, which documents the project: ranabegum.com

^[xvi] See LEGO Super Junk’s website: lego.super-junk.com

Something happened to the adult LEGO community fifteen years ago that transformed it from a niche hobby into a cultural movement.   We now live in a world where it is no longer essential to be a fan to see LEGO models pop up in our social media feeds, where large corporations commission LEGO models to increase their brand awareness and news stations cover the latest epic LEGO creation unveiled in our local towns and cities.  The question is what is it about the unassuming LEGO brick that has enabled it to rise so quickly into our shared social consciousness, to become what might be coined ‘bricks culture’?

Without a doubt the growth of social media, with its ability to share photographs of LEGO models has played a significant part in this story, but this change is perhaps more the catalyst than the primary reason for the transformation.  There is something at the root of the process of building with LEGO bricks that founds our vibrant and self-stimulating community.  It often feels as if just seeing a LEGO model is enough to make us want to build – to participate. Nathan Sawaya[i], who is arguably the most visible LEGO artist working today confirmed this sentiment to me in a recent interview: “Visitors to my exhibitions can connect to the works because of the familiarity with the brick, and I hope that […] leads to inspiration[ii].  Whilst I agree with Sawaya, there is more than familiarity at work here: there is something else about the brick that inspires us all.

Perhaps this familiar anecdote can help illustrate the link between a LEGO model’s power to inspire and the formation of bricks culture.  If like me you have ever had the opportunity to display your creations at a LEGO convention then you have probably come across this scenario.  As a small child, normally around the age of seven or eight, marvels at the model you have made, their parent notes: “It’s sad, they only ever make models according to the instructions; don’t you agree that they are missing out on what building with LEGO bricks is all about?”

This story reflects a truism, and a socially accepted belief, that LEGO building is at its best when it is fired by an individual’s imagination.  However, as is the case with most truisms, they often exaggerate one half of an argument at the expense of the facts.  The parent who watches happily as their child marvels at an often incomprehensibly complex LEGO model, asks their child if they could make something similar when they get home, all the while forgetting that one of the LEGO company’s designer’s amazing models had previously inspired their child to pick up a set of instructions and build in the first place.

The parent’s argument misses the vital moment of inspiration inherent in any encounter with a LEGO model, whether the instructions are present or not.  Transferring the value judgement as to what good and bad building is onto the terms ‘similar’ (good) and ‘identical’ (bad).  In both cases the child has seen a creation they love and as a result wants to build – is the value judgment even necessary?

Seeing a LEGO model inherently suggests that the model can be remade; because it is comprised of individual elements, each of which fit together according to established conventions.  Technically looking at a LEGO model allows you to make that model – as long as you have the required mastery of the building system.  It is for this reason that the visual encounter with the LEGO model for the child may produce wonder, and with it an addition to the spectacle, a little voice that whispers in their ear “you could make that.”

The LEGO Company has long understood the power of their product to entice children and adults alike, sparking a desire to not only own, but also build their models.  There is a tried and tested path between viewing a LEGO set and the need to build it.  The children photographed for the company’s advertising material were regularly shot pushing parts together or surrounded by the detritus of the building process – there was no doubt, here was where the fun lay.    The hours many of us spent viewing the LEGO catalogues as a child were more than speculative shopping trips, they were initial attempts to understand how the models were made.  Precisely because the sets wore their mode of construction on their sleeves, they captivated our imagination.  This was perhaps the first induction most of us had into bricks culture.

In the adult fan community, which for a large part is comprised of collectors, this addition of the building experience to that of owning a set can be seen more explicitly.  Take for example a range of products like the Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series.  These sets aim themselves squarely at the over sixteen market, providing expensive, detailed and challenging models to build, of the most iconic vehicles and characters from the Star Wars franchise.  Their scale and complexity differentiate them from their more play-focused siblings in the main LEGO Star Wars range.  Understandably, given the on-going popularity of the franchise, these sets have proved a huge hit, but why?  There are competitor models as intricate and as impressive as the LEGO sets, yet these have neither captured the popular imagination, nor earned the re-seller price tags of some of the Ultimate Collector series sets.  The answer is simple, that the LEGO sets offer the premise of building the models.

Rewind nearly 40 years to the opening shot of A New Hope[iii] with its iconic sweep of Darth Vader’s Imperial Star Destroyer cruising over our heads.  What made this image so memorable was not just its aesthetic framing and photographic awe, but its impossibility.  A spaceship like this doesn’t exist; this is both a model and a wonderful magic trick.  This unconscious reasoning underpins a large part of society’s continuing fascination with Star Wars, and also gives us that clue as to why LEGO models of these amazing props from the workshops of Industrial Light and Magic[iv] prove so popular.  The LEGO Star wars fan sees the LEGO model with all its tiny elements, and embraces an understanding of these vehicles as a model maker, in short as the creative minds behind Star Wars did.  Buying and building Star Wars models allows them to jump the gap between observer and maker of a world, to being part of a community that wants to understand and build a universe as well as celebrate it.

With the move from seeing to building proving so important to the LEGO experience, it was of course always only a matter of time before replication of a model turned into the development of ever more extreme creations.  In the case of the Ultimate Collector Series of models the word ‘ultimate’ might actually be taken as a taunt.  “Is this really the ‘ultimate model’, or could you make something better?”  It is the return of that same voice that whispered in the child’s ear “you could make that.” Builders take up this challenge; designers like Kim ByeongSoek from Hobbyinside,[v] the Korean LEGO sculpture and diorama specialists, whose recent Star Destroyer model lifts detailing and scale up a notch or two.  With his model complete and receiving due praise from the community, the door is open to read the new set of instructions laid out in this model, interpret it, and move forward in the quest to represent the Star Wars universe in the form of ever more sophisticated creations.

Where the LEGO UCS Star wars set lead, in terms of drawing the line from inspiration to a community of innovation, other sections of the LEGO population follow similar paths.  Take for example another of the adult focused ranges, the Modular Creator series, which comprises of sets such as the Grand Emporium and Corner Café, which itself carries an re-seller price tag comparable to the UCS sets.  These models carry in them the code for a city as broad as the builder’s imagination.  Making one block of your city will always demand more, and whilst additions can be added from the official sets, there comes a time when the need arises to improvise.

In these cases rather than trying to build better than the sets that exist, the aim is to do things differently, to add to the world.  In this aspect of bricks culture, a community forms around the exploration of the possibility of the form.  What can be made that fits the city block grid and could sit next to any of the other models that permeate the scene.  A builder like Ryan Taggart[vi] whose Modular construction site makes exciting changes to the standard formula of a modular building looks ready to become a LEGO set having reached the 10,000 supporter mark on LEGO Ideas[vii].  It arguably completes the loop from community building, via a modification of an established form, back to official product.

Whether we perceive a child’s inspiration from a LEGO catalogue or adult fans interaction with the LEGO Company’s current ranges, a simple fact can be deduced.  The more we look at LEGO creations the more they motivate us to build, and according to the rules and conventions of a given type of model, a culture of interest and innovation develops accordingly.

Bricks culture is in actual fact an ability to speak and read the visual language of LEGO.  It is an easy dialect to learn, disclosing its structure and grammar in every build.  A language that is supremely flexible and adaptive to a group’s shared values.  It also transcends traditional socio-cultural and linguistic barriers, with groups congregating around the ability to understand each other’s love of say mosaic building whether they live in Tokyo or Rome.  Belonging to bricks culture is in short both the process of reading an endlessly growing and universally understandable library of visual images whilst simultaneously being inspired by it.

With this initial conclusion arrived at, that bricks culture is actually a unique and intrinsically inspiring visual language, that illusive shift some 15 years ago that saw the beginning of our current explosion in the enthusiasm for LEGO creations can be identified.  Something happened at this point in time that changed the language of building in such a way to increase its power to inspire and congregate individuals as groups.

There had been throughout the 1990’s and early 2000’s a move by the LEGO Group to simplify building, and increase play options through the use of large pre-formed pieces.  As is well documented[viii] the company’s financial standing took a considerable knock at this time, with sales dropping and the toy falling out of favour with the current generation of children.  The genius response, and a move that arguably saved the company, was to embrace the joy of building; this is what is unique to the product and what millions of children had previously enjoyed.  New sets launched with a stronger building focus and sales followed.

A result of this change saw the types of pieces that were produced in these new sets focus more on core building and connective functions.  Play elements remained but were joined by new linking elements, hinges and brackets.  With many of the designers now working for the company previously having been part of a relatively small hobbyist community, a drive occurred for the elements they had wanted to push the experiments they had conducted with the standard bricks further.  Building sideways or at an angle would be less the preserve of the specialist builder becoming now a part of the general language of LEGO building.

The fan community embraced these new LEGO bricks with verve, and original-building techniques proliferated.  Central to the movement was the rise of the so-called SNOT (studs not on top) building technique, where bricks were built sideways or at an angle to standard bricks.  The immediate aesthetic gain was an ability to alter the quality of a LEGO model; a creation could be smooth and studless, or use combinations of angles to create a multitude of other effects and textures. This was quickly followed by the development of a whole host of unexpected new forms and angles opened up by these modes of construction.  Where before the LEGO builder’s mantra was that anything could be built in LEGO bricks, it now appeared that you could build with LEGO bricks in anyway you wanted to.

Before this shift in building techniques a LEGO creation could be recognised by the simple language of its construction, with most models displaying the same features of one element placed on top of another, ending with a top layer of studded bricks that completed the design.  This replicated style might be considered a simple or formal language, to which all LEGO models conformed; but with the introduction of these new building techniques everything changed: formalism was replaced by a host of experiments.  LEGO building could now make visual puns by using pieces in ways previously not possible and decide on appropriate forms rather than those that standard bricks suggested. This new way of building introduced a more pronounced poetic aspect to the practice of LEGO building.  The result was a maturation of the visual language of it used and by proxy it accelerated society’s interest in LEGO creativity.

As I documented in my first article for Bricks Culture back in 2015[ix] my return to LEGO building began through the photographs of LEGO models.  I started out scanning the various websites and sharing fora that sprung up in the 2000’s.  Here I was surprised by the changes that had occurred.  I thought I understood the visual language of LEGO building, but here were models that defied those conventions that demanded to be read in new ways.  Although resolutely still made of LEGO bricks and as immediately understandable as the models of my childhood, they appeared very different.  The way the builders worked now seemed nuanced; there were styles and sub-styles of buildings; active and decisive decisions to use one technique over another; a whole culture lit up in the plethora of fascinating work.   This was a complex culture of varying dialects, expressions and forms; a place that would entice all the corners of society from the engineers to the illustrators to congregate together around a common language that all could speak.

The case was brought home to me in the way the space builders had developed their craft (in both senses) since I had stopped playing with LEGO bricks as a child.  Back then I imagined that the designers of the classic space sets had raised the bar as high as it could go in term of design.  Of course there were always new designs to be added to the genre, but the idea that this aesthetic could be enhanced or developed further within the formal language of the bricks available at the time seemed impossible.  Yet, with the advent of new techniques the ethos and aesthetic of those original space sets were taken to new places, becoming a facet of bricks culture itself.  You can witness this in the work of a builder like Stephan Niehoff who has reimagined some of the classic themes and vehicles of yesteryear according to these new techniques.  The shapes and forms of the original designers could be exaggerated, perfected and pushed, and for me this was a wonderful realisation: LEGO building was now occupying a true creative cultural space.

Bricks Culture is the advent of a visual language, which is readable not only in the sense of pictorial coherence but as that, which is also immediately understandable as a technique that can be replicated.  A language that translates beyond the simple acts of building into a wide range of other cultural practices: photography, animation, street art and even commercial enterprise.  It permeates the current social milieu because it allows it readers to immediately grasp the creative process in each of its creations.  A unifying and utopian aesthetic form, which brings people together through its power to inspire creative expression.  Bricks culture holds our attention, and asks us to belong, because it inspires us; we witness others’ imaginations in action, and are handed as a result the possibility of realising our own.

Endnotes

[i] See Nathan Sawaya’s website: http://www.brickartist.com

[ii] Smith, David Alexander ‘Interview With Nathan Sawaya’, Bricks Culture, Issue 7, October 2016

[iii] Lucas, George, Star Wars: Episode IV a New Hope, 1977, 20^th Century Fox

[iv] See the homepage of Industrial Light and Music: http://www.ilm.com/

[v] See the Hobbyinside website: http://www.hobbyinside.com

[vi] See Ryan Taggart’s Fklickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/139079438@N02

[vii] See Ryan Taggart’s projrct on LEGO Ideas: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/129250

[viii] See for example: Knowledge@Wharton ‘Innovation Almost Bankrupted Lego – Until it Rebuilt with a Better Blueprint’ in Time, July 23, 2012

[ix] See Stephan Niehoff’s Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephann001/

This article was first published in Bricks Culture 4, and responded to the then recent shootings in Paris.

….

It is the morning of the 14 November 2015 and I have just woken up to the news that a series of orchestrated attacks have taken place in Paris last night. With millions of others all over the world, I watch television footage and listen to reports of gunmen opening fire on innocent civilians in restaurants and music venues across the city.

Shocked and upset I open my social media streams to see if the people in Paris I know are ok, and to hear the voices of my friends, and listen to their response to the events. Amongst the academics, philosophers and professional artists who make up a large proportion of my social network are the LEGO writers, builders and photographers.

Only a few hours have passed since the news broke from Paris and already they are commenting via the medium of bricks. Harley Quin, a thoughtful and prolific LEGO photographer has quickly rendered a sympathetic Tricolore plaque[i]. Other builders quickly construct vignettes replicating this sentiment. As the day progresses they are joined by many others.

This phenomenon is not new. Ten months ago following the previous tragic Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris, the LEGO community along with creatives from every other artistic discipline, expressed the ideological need for art’s freedom of speech. Appearing in streams of images alongside satirical cartoons, photographs, illustrations and paintings, stood LEGO creations such as Jimmy Fortel’s Je Suis Charlie[ii].

These examples highlight a critical mass of builders, which when combined with the power of social media, gives LEGO bricks a new political responsibility. As a mode of expression, it is now for many the first port of call when responding to a troubled world. The dam burst some years ago regarding the constrained use of bricks as a model-making hobby. We are used to seeing artists’ LEGO creations respond to popular culture in all its forms, but it is only when a global political event occurs that the nature of this voice is understood. No one can be in doubt that LEGO artworks have been appropriated, and now constitute a way of visually, often in strikingly simple yet communicable terms, saying something politically charged.

This development has come about, not so much through the development of building techniques, rather through the establishment of LEGO building as part of social and cultural life – one could say through the sharing of creative endeavours. In 2001, there was no immediate response for the LEGO builder to the horror of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers. In 2005, the bombing of London Underground trains and busses equally failed to generate immediate response from the LEGO community. On the day of the Paris terrorist attacks there is an immediate and embedded relationship between the LEGO creations and the voice of the building community. All of which goes to show the growing maturity of what we might call bricks culture.

The simple immediate builds of this morning, that speak to the violence and inhumanity of what has occurred in Paris, are not vaunted on building skill, or the notion of wonder that normally affords them space in the wider media sphere. Rather they are emotive, direct responses that carry the feeling of a whole community. There may be few better mediums for fostering the sentiment of solidarity and pathos than that of the universal building language that LEGO creations use.

Going back only a handful of years, and taking an example such as Todd Webb’s World Trade Centre model from 2007 this change can be noted in more profound terms. His large scale rendition of the twin towers burning moments after two jet airliners were flown into them, advocates model-making over socially communicating, and as such produces, for me at least, an ambivalent response – my gut wants to respond to the tragedy, but my aesthetic sensibility is being seduced by the builder’s talent. The model won best vignette at Brick World in 2007, and is considered an accepted masterpiece by the community, so why does it elicit these contradictory feelings in me.   Webb in his blog article[iii], which records the creation and intention of the build as a monument, is obviously a principled individual. However, the distance from the events of 9/11 combined with the skill of executing architecture and smoke in bricks seems to skew the emphasis away from human tragedy towards aesthetic form. One is reminded of the German critical theorist Theodor Adorno’s warning regarding the aesthetic memorialisation of the holocaust: ‘To write poetry after Auschwiz is barbaric.[iv]’

If a LEGO artwork is going to tackle the barbarity of our contemporary world it cannot turn, in the words of the military strategists of the second Iraq war, on an affect of ‘shock and awe’ that dazzles and overwhelm the viewer’s senses. The relation to the work has to operate at a level beyond that of aesthetic excellence. The Polish artist Zbigniew Libera expressed this when he recreated a Nazi Concentration Camp as a LEGO set[v]. Using the common relation we have, looking down as omnipotent purveyors onto a LEGO model, he asks the viewer to carry out the problematic game of playing the death camp. To understand the work beyond a representation of huts and out buildings one has to think the role of the murderous minds that built and ran the camps, whilst also playing the role of the interned victims. In doing so, and explicitly as a brick built creation, it moves its audience away from the moral certitude of condemnation, by making them think the logic that made the holocaust possible; understanding and feeling the barbarity of the situation at a more complex and troubling level. As an artwork it indeed makes us confront, and in part appropriate, the barbarism of the 20^th Century.

The model concentration camp as political gesture however gained many critics, who saw it as trivialising the Holocaust. Also Libera’s controversial statement printed on the fake LEGO set boxes, which claimed endorsement by LEGO, further complicated the piece, and to this day makes it hard to obtain rights to publish images of the work.

This would not be the last time that the LEGO Company’s association with political events would court outrage. For example in the case of the fake LEGO Rebuild advertising campaign that circulated the internet ten years-ago. The adverts in question took images including the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks and transposed them with the strap line “Rebuild it” and the LEGO logo[vi].   The adverts were never commissioned nor linked to the LEGO group, but this didn’t stop a host of rumours and re-postings of the images with counter information. In reality, two individuals working for the advertising company Saatchi & Saatchi China, had outside the company’s brief independently created the campaigns.   Neither LEGO or Saatchi and Saatchi wanted to be associated with the adverts, leaving only unreliable traces of the image lingering across the Internet. What is interesting about the campaign, even given its fake status, is that as soon as the LEGO Company is linked to a political event, especially a tragic one, an instrumental link is made between business and politics. Any perceived statement, positive or otherwise, is tainted when linked to a disingenuous motive to make money.   Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the LEGO Company has resolutely steered clear of political advocacy.

However, steering clear of association and actually retaining neutrality are two different things. Without digging too deeply into the LEGO Company’s ethical stance, a political agenda is quickly ascertained. There is a ban in its product range around representations of war (of course there are occasional contradictions to this rule such as the Red Baron fighter plane set from 2002). Originally this was defined by a broad pacifist agenda, which many of us might recognise from the peaceful space exploration sets of the late seventies and early eighties. If this were not clear enough, this advert from the sixties makes the message emphatic. Today of course the stance has been diluted, so as to allow fantasy representations of combat in themes such as Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, but actual military hardware is still – mostly – vetoed.

Beyond the carefully considered political positions the LEGO Group has held, there have of course also been several high profile cases of the company inadvertently inciting controversy. For example, in 2012 following the launch of the new LEGO Friends range, a petition was set up on Change.org that sought to inform the company of its unenlightened gender politics.   The complaints ranged from the colour range of pinks and pastels that the sets used to gender differentiate, through to the set themes of home making, pet parlours and beauty salons. But perhaps of greatest worry was the purported sexualisation of the female dolls in the series. Designed to look like teenage girls, the new figurines abandoned the mini-figure design for a more curvy ‘lady-figure’. Calif Berkley writing in the New York Times summed up the ill feeling toward the new range: “Today’s boys and girls will eventually be one another’s professional peers, employers, employees, romantic partners, co-parents. How can they develop skills for such collaborations from toys that increasingly emphasise, reinforce, or even create, gender differences?[vii]”

What of course many of the critics of the Friends range failed to notice was that they tended towards a black or white reading of the LEGO sets, quickly implying a one size fits all reading that was used, not so much to value the sets as to further a broader social debate around gender equality. However, on closer analysis, as seen in this short promotional write-up for the LEGO Friends school set, the company evidenced a more progressive view of young girls’ career aspirations than many of the critics gave them credit for: “Be the star of biology class when Ms. Stevens calls you to the chalkboard to identify the different parts of the owl’s body!”

It was not only the LEGO Company that offered a more rounded view of gender aspirations, the LEGO community also pushed for a more comprehensive view of women through their own creations. The most successful of which was Ellen Koojiman’s Research Institute proposal, a model that comprised of three female scientists at work in their respective laboratories. Koojiman’s insisted that the professions of these mini-figure women should offer strong role models to young girls. The creation was subsequently submitted to LEGO Ideas, the crowd sourcing arm of the company’s operations. It obtained the required level of votes, and was released as an official set in 2014. This democratic process allowed the fan community through building, a way to steer the ideals that would underpin the sets the LEGO Company would produce. To LEGO’s credit they listened to their customers and delivered the models they wanted.

This use of LEGO brick’s ability to be reconfigured makes it a potent political device. In 2014 this was evidenced once more when Greenpeace created a video and petition designed to highlight what they saw as a problematic co-promotional arrangement signed in 2011 between the LEGO Company and the oil giant Shell. The video, a LEGO animation, showed both the plight of the Arctic at the hands of the unchecked asset stripping oil miners, as well as imitating the then recent and highly successful LEGO Movie.

Although relatively simplistic, the emotive tone of the advert proved effective. Where the LEGO Movie had asserted a core set of values, that creativity and personal expression should be prized over the norms of a contemporary hegemonic world, their spoof advert linked these LEGO creations to the destructive drive of unchecked business. Devastation provocatively replaced creation. Increasing the polemic irony, the upbeat theme tune to the film, Everything is Awesome, was supplemented for a cover version performed as a maudlin ballad.   By doing all of this through the power of building with LEGO bricks, the video immediately appealed to the LEGO fans’ aesthetic sensibility, and Greenpeace as result applied pressure on the company where it hurt most, by speaking to its customers.

The campaign achieved its aim later that year, with the company announcing that it would cease its working relationship with Shell. By using LEGO brick’s ability to build anything one wants, Greenpeace rewrote the political narrative of the LEGO Movie in its own image.

Greenpeace was able to differentiate the political potential of building with LEGO bricks from the business operations of the LEGO Company, in a way that was rhetorically divisive. The link between building and critical perspective is obvious in this example, but when the political target is not the LEGO Company itself, what makes building with bricks a useful or more successful medium than traditional forms of political engagement.

Debbie Hickey’s set of LEGO photographs of mini-figures with their associated slogans, which argued for the yes vote in the recent gay marriage ballot in Ireland helps answer this[viii]. Hickey’s campaign was obviously part of a much larger set of political initiatives. What her particular choice of the mini-figure achieved was an immediate understanding of the intrinsic similitude between people irrespective of sexual orientation. Using the generic conditions that establish all LEGO mini-figures as having interchangeable elements that operate according to a universal rule, she provided an analogy for a society that must accept a range of differences under a general law of equality, or accept the failure of the law as a set of principles.

The system of building provided by LEGO bricks provides an interesting analogy for the dilemma our contemporary society faces. As part of a liberal democracy we expect the right to individuality, to express and be the person we are free of intervention. Yet, we also demand that our society provide laws and conventions that protect us from violence and hatred. Building with LEGO bricks provides a practical realisation of these requirements: a set of collaborative and connective rules that enable infinite difference. As long as we build with bricks, rather than break bricks, or as was seen in the LEGO Movie glue them together, we support difference and order at the same time. Perhaps this is the utopian message at the heart of this creative medium?

Possibly it was for this reason that the dissident Chinese political artist Ai Weiwei chose LEGO bricks as his medium for an upcoming exhibit ‘Letgo Room’[ix], which approaches the topic of free speech, at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia. His work over the past ten years has grappled with his home country’s repressive stance on free expression and political voice. Risking controversy and arrest he has unrelentingly advocated resistance to the Chinese political system. What better medium than LEGO bricks, that innately refers to infinite difference within a system, to say this with.

However as things transpired, the desire to work with LEGO bricks created a different type of conflict. The Guardian newspaper reporting on the 25 October[x], noted that the LEGO Group had refused Ai Weiwei’s request to buy a large number of LEGO bricks from them wholesale. The reason being to protect their neutrality and not align the company with his or any other political agenda. The LEGO Group had been stung in the clamor around Libera’s Concentration Camp. A project, which they had provided bricks for, without knowing the artist’s intention. Possibly they wanted to avoid a repeat of this incident.   As the Guardian went on to explain this had created a whirlwind of upset, with many people calling the LEGO Group out as being ethically irresponsible, and offering to donate their own bricks to the cause.

Within the LEGO fan and building community a different response resonated. There was an unwillingness to accept this rejection as silencing the artist. Although not able to buy the bricks at wholesale price, there was nothing to stop him buying them at the commercial rate as they had to – did his fame give him a privileged status. Beyond this there lingered a sentiment that neutrality remained important and that it ought to be the builders and users of LEGO bricks through their creations, not the company, that decided the political position of the product.

Of course, there was a misreading of Ai Weiwei in all of this. A provocateur and artist beyond his artworks, the rejection by the LEGO Group had allowed him to turn the situation into a wider debate about the right to remain silent on certain ethical issues. When wrong is being done, do you have the right to stick to ethical principles if it means closing your eyes to injustice? The aim of his dispute was not to obtain cheap LEGO bricks, but instead to highlight a debate about corporate neutrality and world politics.

Amongst the online chatter that surrounded this debate, my friend Paul O’Kane[xi] an artist, theorist and open political voice on the Internet, suggested that a response to Ai Weiwei’s position was for the LEGO community to participate in an outpouring of political LEGO creations. I asked myself why this type of building remains as rare as it is outside the moments of solidarity that events such as the recent Paris shootings instigated; and why O’Kane’s legitimate and interesting response was unlikely to be taken up?

There are very few artists working with LEGO bricks who have put politics and activism at the centre of their work. Maybe it is because there is something difficult about the aesthetics of building and the critical perspective that questions what we do in the name of politics, ideals and religions. However one builder, who chooses to remain anonymous by working under the name Legofesto, attempts this[xii]. Their work comprises of direct reportage combined with simple yet startlingly immediate LEGO creations. If Webb’s World Trade Towers clung to an impossible virtuosity and aesthetic response to horror, Legofesto embraces Adorno’s statement that a work of art has to be barbaric in an era of barbarism – effectively working outside the aesthetic register.

Although mainly working with themes to do with war and the troubles in the Middle East, which uncompromisingly depict the brutality of these conflicts, Legofesto regularly draws on issues that impact on our everyday lives.  In Northern Rock: The Road to Nationalism, a comment on the inception of the current financial crisis and culture of austerity, we see the LEGO mini-figure once more used to represent the uniformity of the citizen.  However, here the capitalist system is seen as the dominant force.  The differences presented in the queue of figures are insignificant in initiating change.  Change comes from global forces beyond any individual expression of subjective freedom.

In G20: Death at a Protest, which recreates the events of the G20 protests in London in April 2009, where Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper seller was brutally pushed to the ground by a police officer and subsequently died, she revisits the theme in more harrowing circumstances.  Here the diversity of mini-figure protestors is seen confronting the black-visored LEGO policemen.  The vignette operates as a stark realisation of an inflexible system that can all too quickly turn upon the democratic body.

Perhaps Legofesto is implying we can only build with the bricks the LEGO Company sells us, and our expression and our ambitions – in life as in the hobby – are ultimately limited by the number of LEGO sets we can purchase? The paradox is that Legofesto the LEGO builder reveals this limit critically through their LEGO creations; and in doing so answers their own question with a resounding no.  Political voice is always possible irrespective of the uniformity of a system.

It is just under three weeks since the Paris attacks and in the UK the House of Commons is voting on whether Britain’s response should be to launch air strikes on Syria. My friends who are artists, philosophers and academics are debating loudly on social media about the rights and wrongs of this action. However, the LEGO builders who I was so proud to see responding through building to the tragedy of the 13 November are absent from this debate. Is it that LEGO artworks can only speak of solidarity and consensus? I think not, bricks have an immense potential to argue through showing and feeling. Its voice is often understood when reasoned argument fails.   The aforementioned bricks culture is a new phenomenon, a nascent social dynamic with huge reach and appeal. The culture is growing and attaining greater social reach, but it is yet to fully realise its place and potential as a political tool; able to argue through a literal constructive showing. It is only a matter of time before builders fully deploy their political voice in brick form, and when they do, potentially influence opinions for the good.

Endnotes

[i] See Harley Quin’s Instagram page: www.instagram.com/harleyquin.

[ii] See Jimmy Fortel’s Flicker stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7kyubi7/16204049066.

[iii] Todd Webb Blog: http://www.toddwebb.com/Lego-WTC.shtm.

[iv] Adorno, Theodor, W. Prisms, Cambridge/Massachusetts, MIT Press (1982), p.32.

[v] Examples of Zbigniew Libera’s artworks including the Concentration Camp set can seen at his artist profile page: www.raster.art.pl/gallery/artists/libera/prace.htm.

[vi] The story of the events relating to the Rebuild campaign, along with images of the adverts, can be read about in this Campaign Brief blog entry: http://www.campaignbrief.com/2006/12/saatchi-china-team-fired-apolo.html.

[vii] Berkley, Calif, ‘Should the World of Toys be Gender Free?’ in the New York Times, 29 December 2011.

[viii] Hickey documents the campaign on her website: http://www.debbiehickey.com/category/lego.

[ix] Weiwei, Ai, Letgo Room, 2015.

[x] Kennedy, Maev, ‘Artist Ai Weiwei vows to accepts offers of Lego from around the world’, in the Guradian, 25 October 2015.

[xi] See Paul O’Kane’s website: ww.okpaul.com.

[xii] See Legofesto’s blog: www.legofesto.blogspot.co.uk/.