U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere: A Leap into the Future of Art, Technology, and Music

In the realm of art, technology, and music, few bands have been as synonymous with pushing the boundaries of creativity as U2. Founded on innovation and artistic evolution principles, U2 sees beyond the horizon, living in new dimensions where inspiration flows from the visual and cultural codes, shaping the future. This spirit makes U2’s upcoming U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere shows a step into the future, bridging art, music, science, and technology. 

U2’s artistry extends beyond music. Their album covers and cinematic music videos, for which “artwork” is the only suitable word, have inspired the industry. Not to mention their immersive concert experiences, like the U2 360° Tour with The Claw stage, exemplify their fusion of music and visual art.

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hube: ​​As creative languages, music, and visual art share both similarities and distinctions. How do you perceive the relationship between musical and visual harmony?

Adam Clayton: I think the creative language between music and the visual arts both influence and drive each other. Music, in my experience, is usually ahead of visual arts. That’s because it is more immediate. It has a street culture. Whereas the visual arts tend to be a bit more culturally based, with a different audience that appreciates it. That, of course, all changed with the graffiti art movement, where you had the collision of music and art at the street level. 

I’ve found that pretty much every artist listens to music when they go through art college, and, in fact, many artists are conflicted about whether to follow music or the visual arts. Then, later on, when they set up their own practices and their own studios, music is a big part of their creative process. I think the street effect of music and the high art of the visual world are always in some sort of communication; they exist together.

h: In art, beauty is no longer considered essential; concepts and their emotional resonance are increasingly taking precedence. What are your thoughts on the role of beauty in art?

AC: I’m all for it. I’m a big believer in art being true to its roots, which was evident in the original system of patronage. Art was supposed to illustrate the idea of the supernatural and religiosity, so artists created these sorts of idealized subjects. That then carried into portraiture and allegorical paintings about landscapes and spiritual pursuits. That’s where it came from, and of course, that’s where the technology comes from too, because at the time, nobody really imagined that canvas and oil paint would last for centuries, and they clearly have. The secondary technology that was developed at the time, of course, was casting bronze or crafting stone. These two things, again, have an extraordinary permanence that lasts forever. When we move to more contemporary art, it’s not so much about eternal beauty and the subjects, it’s much more about creating some sort of a statement that disrupts and challenges the viewer. Conceptual art was really born in the last century. I think as technology progresses, artists have been quick to adopt digital art. Although we are bombarded with visual imagery of an electronic nature, within all that, art can break through. And hopefully, that’s what we’ve got going on in our show. 

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Achtung Baby is U2’s seventh studio album, released in 1991. It represents a radical shift in U2’s musical style. The band moved away from the anthemic, stadium-filling sound and embraced a more experimental, electronic, and industrial-influenced approach. The album was live during significant cultural shifts in music and the world at large. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War profoundly impacted the album’s creation. Achtung Baby is about U2’s artistic evolution, a shift, and an exploration of personal and relational turmoil. It’s a pivotal album in the band’s career and it frankly reflects the changing times. 

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h: In many ways, art is a form of communication, a means to elicit and express emotions. Your forthcoming project, U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere will bring you face to face with hundreds of thousands of your fans. What kind of emotions do you hope this new show will evoke in them?

AC: Art is a form of communication, and it is particularly effective when it’s a shared experience. Recently in digital art, there have been small gatherings of work in galleries where people, in ones and twos, come in and experience the images that are being displayed together. U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere is an opportunity to generate visual art and share it with a live audience of generally 20,000 people. That shared experience is important. What we’ve found is that the artists we have been working with wanted to get away from the VR goggles experience of their art. They want to experience it on a very big screen, which is what we’ve got here. The artists in question have been able to make the most of that big screen, and they’ve been both excited and challenged by it.

For Example, John Gerrard’s flag is almost 40 meters high… you just can’t get that kind of scale when you’re in a regular gallery or looking through VR goggles. I think that the experience will create an emotional response within the audience that will travel throughout the venue. In fact, one of the things I am really excited about experiencing when we play our first concert is the way that people react to these large images while listening to our music. 

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Achtung Baby in 2023 is as timely as in 1991. Thirty-two years have passed to find ourselves in pivotal and more-than-ever-changing times. U2:UV Achtung Baby  is an upcoming limited series of 25 concerts from 29 September to 16 December 2023 at Sphere in Las Vegas. It will be the first major U2 performance since 2019, celebrating the anniversary of an iconic album and featuring the opening of a breakthrough venue — a truly remarkable event.

U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere will kickstart in a venue that is an interdisciplinary space where art and technology meet. Sphere, standing tall at 366 feet (112 m) and 516 feet (157 m) wide, is a modern marvel. It will be the largest spherical building in the world at 875,000 sq ft (81,300 m2). It’s not just a building or a music venue; it’s an immersive experience of sound, visuals, and emotions.

Sphere is also home to the world’s highest-resolution wraparound LED screen. Its exterior is adorned with 1.2 million hockey puck-sized LEDs, making it the largest on the planet. Sphere is a canvas for immersive experiences in cinema and performance. In an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Bono of U2 notes, “Most music venues are built for sports — they’re not built for art. This building was built for immersive experiences in art and performance.” It was designed to revolutionize live entertainment.

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h: Could you tell us a bit more about your work for U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere. How did you come up with this particular concept?

Es Devlin: It’s an immense privilege to inaugurate a building. To be the first to play this resonant new musical instrument. We declare its materiality at the outset. We break through its mass to reveal Las Vegas, precisely the view of car parks and the backs of buildings that we would see were the Sphere to be erased, and then we unbuild the glimmering city to reveal the desert before handing it over to the residents of this particular place on the planet.

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When U2 takes the stage at MSG Sphere, they will be surrounded by a towering 16K LED screen extending from ground level to 250 feet. It’s an awe-inspiring visual spectacle that merges seamlessly with their music, creating a truly immersive experience. The Sphere promises next-level audio with over 160,00 speakers and sensory enhancements with haptic seats that can vibrate to match on-screen events, making each performance a journey into the future of live music.

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h: Art can be seen as an intrusion of the imagined world into reality. As an artist working in many mediums—amongst them, architecture, performance, music, and sculpture, how do you perceive the connection between art and design?

ED: For better and worse, many of the most recent phenomena imposed upon the Earth began within the human imagination. The quality of our imaginings has a direct impact on the planet and every species that calls it home. The show begins in an environment made of matter—clay, stone, concrete—declaring and admitting the mineral resources that have gone into its fabrication. The performers are first broadcast as shadows on stone. By the end of the show, the material has been refined into carved alabaster in homage to 250 of the most endangered Nevadian species: the Crescent Dune Aphodius Scarab Beetle, the Sand Mountain blue butterfly, and the Mojave poppy bee. It’s our hope that along with the lyrics that the audience knows by heart, they might learn some of the names of these more-than-human Nevadians, as we begin to conserve a habitat for endangered species within the human imagination. The Sphere is inaugurated as a cathedral of collective choral community—singing human and more-than-human stories.

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h: Do you believe that virtual reality can change our mindsets, behavior, tastes etc.? How the evolution of digital worlds and metaverse have influenced your own creative vision?

Marco Brambilla: Virtual reality is as much a psychological medium as it is a visual medium. In the Sphere, you see imagery as you would in VR, but without the headset.

h: Given how rapidly technology is evolving, what do you think creative environments and our creative capabilities might look like in the future?

MB: The current trends in AI have affected the way I’m able to make work. I use it to sketch and also to find references and imagery that I use in the work itself. The work commissioned by U2 made extensive use of AI, computer graphics, and 3D graphics to produce the video.

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With its promise of innovative storytelling and groundbreaking performances, U2:UV Achtung Baby invites us all to take part in shaping the future of art and technology.

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h: As the line between public and private increasingly blurs, we have come to associate works of art with the personality of their creators, almost as if the artist’s life is indistinguishable from their creations. What are your thoughts on this phenomenon?

Adam Clayton: This is an interesting question because to a degree it goes back to Andy Warhol. He believed that in the future everybody would be entitled to 15 minutes of fame, and indeed, it’s been more so in some people’s cases. I suppose the largest promulgator of this, or the person pushing this idea the furthest, would be somebody like Jeff Koons. He very much, particularly in his work with La Cicciolina, featured in his art, as well as talking about it and developing it along the lines of his very large sculptures of children’s toys. Which again, represented his conflict with custody over the child he had with La Cicciolina. 

I think Julian Schnabel would be another case of somebody who self-identifies with their work. I think it’s the modern world. I think artists are much more savvy about how to promote themselves. They are much more savvy about how to use social media. But I think it is where art inevitably is going to go in our society. There is so much noise pollution and energy out there that it is really hard for an artist to cut through. If these artists are confined to quiet gallery spaces, very few people will get to see what they’re doing or be challenged by what they’re doing—they just need a bigger stage. 

h: Everything you do is beautiful. You manage to translate incredibly complex statements and issues into compelling visual pieces. In your opinion, how do ethics and aesthetics interact?

Es Devlin: I consider the audience to be a temporary society, a rehearsal for a community that recognizes itself as a connected entity rather than a series of atomized individuals. It took me a while to realize it, but I think much of my practice has been an unconscious reaction to the 1980s Thatcherite mantra that I grew up hearing on [BBC] Radio 4: “There’s no such thing as society: only the individual.” Everything I’ve read and experienced since then has taught me that, really, there’s no such thing as the individual, only the biosphere and our connectedness and continuity within it—to one another and to all species. Broadly, the aesthetic choices that I make in my work are all aiming to express this quality of abundance and continuity. This is what I would define as beauty.

h: You seem to find great inspiration in poetry, particularly its elements of rhythm, freedom, and sensuality. What is it that attracts you to poetry?

ED: One of the most essential characteristics of our species (and many others, if only we learn their languages) is our ability to speak and sing: to express the planet back to itself. Poetry is language at its most concentrated. If your house burned down and you lost all your possessions, a poem learned by heart would be what you’d have left. 

h: Some believe that music is the embodiment of freedom, the ultimate form of abstraction. Your works feature many musical elements. Can you tell us a little about your personal relationship with music?

Marco Brambilla: Music has conjured up images for me since childhood. I often start a project listening to a specific piece of music and listen on repeat while working. It creates a mood and puts me in a specific psychological space. I’ve made visuals for three operas which were all rewarding collaborations as I was able to connect with the music. This is also the case for the Achtung Baby album, which I listened to when it was first released.

h: Your artistic practice is extremely cross-cultural. Ancient mythology and pop culture motifs engage actively in your work. What attracts you so much in your dialogue with different cultural contexts?

MB: The collision between historical themes, like the Renaissance and Baroque, and pop culture, give my work a tension that is very specific. Looking at our history through the prism of technology and contemporary media is central to the work I make.

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