Earth Landing Project
Los Angeles interview
Moderation: Forino
Curation: Victor
Transcription: Elias
forino: Getting into furniture design, was that your parents’ influence? What got you into this?
elp: Yeah, I don’t really have an answer. I kind of fell into it. I don’t have a history – my parents aren’t artistic or anything like that. I moved out here, I was trying to figure shit out, and industrial design just seemed cool to me. Like, oh, it’s a mix of art and technical shit–I was just drawn to it.
forino: Right on. You mind if I sit down?
elp: Sure.
forino: Oh you play guitar as well? A broken string guitar?
elp: Yeah, it just lost the string.It’s a pretty good one.
elp: I bought it off a homeless dude.
forino: Really? How much did you get it for?
elp: $1500.
forino: Oh nice. It’s a good one.
elp: Yeah, it’s a Brazilian classical guitar.
forino: Do you reckon you could make a lamp out of that?
elp: That’s a good idea. But yeah, I guess where this whole thing started–how I’ve been working–is with a buddy of mine from art school, who was an artist.
And he was coming from a different field–he’s an artist, he doesn’t give a shit about design history or rules, whatever. So he’s coming to it with this really irreverent attitude. And all the stuff we were thinking of was kind of absurd, useless objects. And that’s where we came up with the name, the Earth Landing Project, which was his idea. He’s back in China now. But we’re kind of carrying on that sort of attitude.
forino: Kind of like a punk culture. If Nirvana was making interior design.elp: A little, haha.
forino: Did you start off in a different branch and get into interior decorating?
elp: Not really. I’d say more than anything, I’ve kind of split and wanted to become more an artist in a way. The approach that you learn in school isn’t interesting anymore to me. I knew a lot of people doing really amazing stuff and so I was looking into that. Yeah, more and more I don’t really care about product design. I prefer things that give atmosphere and tell a story.
forino: Is that how they taught you at school?
elp: No, it was very much “know your target audience,” “create this proposal.” It was very structured and business-minded,
which doesn’t fit with… But anyways, I would sneak into all the art classes and sit in on the lectures and that sort of thing.
forino: Which one was your first one?
elp: The first one I ever made was a chandelier, with like five or six shades, and all black. Everything was black. I wanted it to look like it came out of a factory. But since then–
forino: You’ve added more color.
elp:More color, less trying to be precise.
elp: This was just resin from the studio.
forino: Oh, you made the resin yourself? And then make the mold?
elp: Yeah, we have a mold and then we pour the resin. And then the things that would spill over the top would then be – you would have this little thin layer. So every color you’re seeing in there was a full lightshade. But these were the excess, kind of. Yeah, you can even see how this one’s fucked up.
forino: Add some more of that mutant bit, right? Sewage water. An experiment.
elp: A swamp maybe.
forino: Do you have any interest or opinion in new materials made from bio-based plastics such as PLA made from fermented corn stalks? What material would you like to work with next?
elp: Yeah, I don’t really care about the eco-friendly stuff. I probably shouldn’t say that haha.
forino: No, finally, some real stuff! Haha. It’s the punk energy.
elp: I like the “fucked-up.” When I have a table and I’m working with resin and it’s covered in this slime, it feels like I have my own little nuclear waste.
forino: I was thinking about going to a beach and picking up all the random trash that you’d find–
elp: Yeah, that stuff, I get really inspired by found objects. I try to incorporate a lot of that.
forino: What’s the coolest thing that you’ve found and done something with? Do you do it often?
elp: Yeah, I’ll often go into a thrift shop or something to look for materials.
elp:Or, there’s a junkyard in the Valley that Hollywood uses a lot for props. It’s a cool mix of all these satellites, airplane antennas, airplane parts, fuselages… and you can buy stuff. One of the things I got recently, which I think turned out pretty cool, was–there was a show in the early 2000s I think called American Ninja Warrior
forino: Hell yeah dude! I used to watch that all the time.
elp: It’s funny, me and my friends used to go to a parkour gym a lot. It was something that I was interested in. But yeah we found these big metal parts that were from an obstacle [in that show]. So we bought them and turned it into a chair. I thought it was a cool project.
forino: What obstacle, or what challenge was it from?
elp: It wasn’t something super memorable. It was like, a wheel that you were supposed to grab. It was on a rotating thing that you would swing. Some Tarzan thing.
forino: How often would you go and check [the junkyard] out?
elp: Every few months when I was feeling out of ideas. The buddy of mine, who I worked with, we would go to the beach constantly.
forino: To pick stuff out? Trash?
elp: And surf or whatever.
forino: Message in a bottle, random plastic turtles, cans.
elp: We had a good collection going of just balls–orbs–random things, weird faded plastic. Just the colors are really cool.
forino: Yeah, you get those washed up green bottle shards. Is that where they’re from? Those green little shards?
elp: Yeah, bottles.
forino: Glass and such. Gets refined in the water. I can imagine building a mosaic out of all that shit. Or an attachment to the lamps so when the lightbulb glows it becomes stained glass.
forino: What is the biggest lamp that you’ve made? Or have they all been this size?
elp: Oh no no, there’s a monster in my apartment. I think in total, there’s 30 shades. So you can imagine, this is like eight or nine. It takes up an entire staircase.
forino: I was at San Diego Balboa Park the other day
elp: That’s where the zoo is right?
forino: Yeah, yeah. There was this monstrous cactus growing wild.
forino: And me and the mates were like–”this is what we need more of.” You don’t know where it starts, you don’t know where it ends, two stories high, swirling around–this weird octopus, Cthulian monster shit. You can get real crazy with these materials, that’s the beauty of it.To me these lamps take on a mutant jellyfish-look.
elp: Hell yeah.
forino: If you could give an animal to these lamps what would you say?
elp: Yeah, definitely more like alien or mutant, bugs or worms.
forino: It’s weird how the more microscopic you get, into creatures and insects, the more architectural they get.
forino: They look like skyscrapers from the future or whatever. Have you seen that image of a screw, or some engineering thing; and one image is what it looks like from a shop, and the next is a human’s most optimal way of doing it, and then you’ve got AI’s most optimal way, which is even more alien and freakish looking. As in, this is a computer’s most optimal way of lining up a room.
forino: What would be your ultimate creation for interior design? What function would it serve and what would it be made of?
elp: I guess it is to do a full interior–like lights, floor, ceiling, everything–but to create something that has everything combined. Like a sofa with lighting combined. Some sort of fabric or floor treatment on the walls. But creating something that is an interior in itself.
forino: Do you use any of your creations in your own living space?
elp: Yeah, a lot. I’d say the lighting, the rugs, and I’ve done quite a few chairs. I had some cabinets and stuff. If I could show you my place in _____, it’s kind of like a full interior.
forino: You’ll have to send us some pictures if you’ve got some.
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Thank you Stefan for having us in your workshop! ;)