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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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photo taken from Henrik Larrson's excellent online collection of pictures
Went to the Kraftwerk concert in Toronto last night. My friend Andy and I chair-danced like dorks and tried not to elbow our staid neighbours, who were demurely toe-tapping and text-messaging the entire time. Upper Canadians might just be more reserved than Germans. Anyhow I haven't laughed so hard in a long time, and the show was flipping great. The set was really perfect, the four guys and their machines framed by bands of light behind and below. I loved all the cycling footage during Tour de France. You can see the video here (scroll down). Autobahn portrayed nostalgic vacation illustrations from the heady days of early highway design, depicting the whole concept as a sort of cute, out-moded human project. That subtle (well .. subtle by Kraftwerk standards anyhow) ecological stance, juxtaposed against groovy, flesh and metal, fetish shots of cyclists, made it clear that bikes and computers are the cyborg partners of choice for these fellows. Vitamin also made a big visual impression: a field of trippy spinning pills like in Drugstore Cowboy and a great, simple wireframe animation of Alkaseltzer type fizzing action in a glass. Andy was pleased that they played Pocket Calculator, which he has been singing regularly, while making pokey finger motions, for at least the ten years that I've known him. The graphic was hilarious.... a big calculator with poking finger! Says Andy, "My god these guys are so literal." He's right, but they do it with gusto and it makes for a lot of fun. Thanks to Tom Moody, whose earlier Kratwerk post inspired me to go.
Note: afterwards we went down to the floor to check out the island of equipment. I didn't know what any of the machines were, but I do recognise a mitful of floppy disks when I see them. I asked the guy what on earth he had on floppies, and he, with a wry smile, said "lighting cues." Mysterious.
Comfortably behind the trend, as usual, I 've just found out (many thanks to Lauren and Rick) about www.zefrank.com. There is a lot of good entertainment on this site. My favourite so far is this deadpan faux doc on Homeland Security design."
singing Na-na-na-na to Ottawa. Go Toronto May Police! (game 7, 2 minutes left, 4-1 Leafs)
more cyborg notes
I watched part of a kid's show the other day and didn't get the name of it. I've scanned the TV Guide and Google and can't come up with it. In the show, a boy and his friends have a pal named "Cyborg" who hangs out with them. Cyborg is a half-man half-machine (go figure) and very tame and normal except that he seems to be an adult and is hanging around with nine-year olds. Anyhow, Cyborg gets kidnapped by a dude whose name I didn't catch. This guy used to be half-man, half-robot, but he had removed his human parts. Dude plans to help Cyborg become superior, like himself. Cyborg, strapped down on an operating table, protests " If you take out my biological parts, you remove the best part of me!" Dude responds, "But all of your memories and emotions will be downloaded into your improved body." A playback montage ensues in which we see Cyborg's memories; lots of hanging out with the kids at picnics and flying kites and whatnot. Cyborg manages to free himself from the operating table and pushes a button that reverse the setup so Dude sees the flashback as if with Cyborg's own eyes. It's a big surprise, "I never knew the world was so beautiful through human eyes." Yes, according to this show we humans have very good eyeballs and they make our experience...superior to robots' experience! Dude is stricken and upset, realising that without any human parts he is actually inferior to Cyborg. But it all ends happily cause the kids help him out, and undertake to teach him how to be more human by letting him join them and Cyborg in the park to throw the football around. I'm not making any of this up.
There is an interesting thread here about Richard Serra and other things to do with minimalism.