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Kraftwerk goes 3-D

Musciologists value Kraftwerk as much as techno-freaks – in their quieter way, of course. The band’s pioneering electronic music in the 1970s and after was revolutionary.

Kraftwerk’s founders studied at the Dusseldorf Conservatory but quickly detoured from classical music, adopting electronics and digital themes as their own. Kraftwerk’s themes have always been technology and modern life. Think Autobahn (1974), Radio-Activity (1975), The Man-Machine (1978) or Computer World (1981).

Their music may be danceable but it is also minimalised and abstracted. It owes a debt to musicians like Karlheinz Stockhausen – and also to the minimalist and abstract art movements in which Dusseldorf was steeped in previous decades. At least that’s the interpretation of Matthias Mühling, curator of the Lenbachhaus Kunstbau, an important art gallery in Munich, who invited Kraftwerk to create a sort of ‘retrospective’ of its music, using new film technologies.

The exhibition opens 14 October at Munich’s Lenbachhaus Kunstbau.


The band designed a series of 3-D videos expressly for the cavernous space of the gallery which lies above the tracks of an underground station. The screens are huge, inflating the impact of the 3-D effects which are as powerful, focussed and minimalist as their music.

So in We are the Robots (Wir sind die Roboten), robot arms reach out unhurriedly to the viewer in a disinterested way. In Computer World (Computerwelt), numbers fly from the screen into the face of the viewer but then fly as swiftly back into the screen. Sometimes the numbers are abstracted into three-dimensional graphs which bulge in waves forwards and backwards. Words appear in several languages.

You can see some of this in these short video clips which I filmed – in 2-D – during the press showing. The brazen intrusion of TV cameramen in some parts at least gives an impression of the scale.

The videos are witty, their references wide, and the technological images they use – like the boxy computers – are stuck in the era when the music was first created. They project what Mühling terms a ‘retrofuturistic’ air.

The show runs for four weeks.

Comments

  1. Report this comment

    Angelita said:

    In my opinion, Kraftwerk represents many aspects of the soul of contemporary Germany, and the integration of art and technology is just one of them. I am a Brazilian who loves the city of Munich and the creations of Kraftwerk. It would be wonderful to be there to see this exhibition, but it is not possible, so, at least worth reading about it here. Thank you!

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    Paulo Soares said:

    Die brasilianischen Fans von KRAFTWERK möchte die Show und Ausstellung finden Sie hier in Brasilien! // The Brazilian fans of KRAFTWERK would like to see the show and exhibition here in Brazil!

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    Guenther Sawatzki said:

    “We are the Robots (Wir sind die Roboten)”, sorry

    but the German original should be “Wir sind die Roboter”; could you correct this? By the way “roboten” is a slang expression for working!

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