Man-Maschine: Where Are The Robots

 

The programme ›Man–Machine‹ illustrates the impact of technical developments on the artistic process since the invention of film.

 

By making his dying hero ask the question: »Do I hear the light?« in his 1865 opera ›Tristan and Isolde‹ Richard Wagner anticipated the invention of optical sound in the 1920s. It was then that artists and engineers began the systematic investigation of sound as a visual phenomenon. Among the pioneers of electronic music and synthetic sounds were the inventor of ›Sonorous Hand Writing‹, Oskar Fischinger, Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy, Evgeny Scholpo and Norman McLaren. In ›Pen Point Percussion‹ (1951) McLaren explained the methods of directly applying the audio track to the film strip by painting on transparent film, scratching on black film or photographing onto film.

 

›Ballet Mécanique‹ was the only film by the cubist painter and designer Fernand Léger, which he had made with the American filmmaker Dudley Murphy in 1924. In it, everyday objects such as pots, pans, cutlery and dishes were choreographed in a way to make them appear as abstract objects. Automated kinetic sculptures made of circles, triangles and artificial legs started to dance. He combined this ballet of machines and objects with found footage material and distorted recordings of the French artist and dancer Kiki de Montparnasse. Léger described his experiment as a »film without plot«, putting him into the proximity of the artists of ›Absolute Film‹. George Antheil’s composition, featuring klaxons, 16 mechanical pianos and three aircraft propellers still sounds fresh today. Due to technical problems, it was performed silently at the premiere which lead to loud protests by the audience.

 

Approximately 40 years later, Rolf Liebermann, who had been the artistic director of the Hamburg Opera for many years, wrote an entire symphony exclusively for machines. He wrote ›Les Echanges‹ for the pavilion of the same name at the 1964 Swiss National Exhibition in Lausanne. It is a rhythmic score for the various appliances used in the offices and shops at display. The NDR editor Hansjörg Pauli translated the score into computer language. The performances of the legendary machine orchestra consisting of 156 typewriters, booking machines, teleprinters, cash registers, telephones and other machines were conducted by an electronic control unit and quickly turned into a central point of attraction at the exhibition.

 

In ›Kontakte‹ Karlheinz Stockhausen mixed synthetic sounds with analogue ones made by wood, fur and metal. Robert Breer added an abstract animated film to the score. It premiered at the second New York Avant Garde Festival, which had been organised by Charlotte Moormann, as part of the composition ›Originale‹. Inspired by the Fluxus movement, Stockhausen had extended his score ›Originale‹ with theatrical elements such as performances, readings and film projections which were to occur simultaneously. Alongside Robert Breer, Charlotte Moormann and others, Alan Ginsberg and Nam June Paik participated in the happening as well.

 

Two years later, Nam June Paik deconstructed the machine of illusions called television in ›Beatles Electroniques‹ by showing what it really is: An apparatus for the reception of data and picture elements. Manipulated by magnetic disturbances, the Beatles wind their way through the video as loops of light and waves to the score of ›Four Loops‹ by Richard Kerner. The music is based on distorted samples of the song›A Hard Day’s Night‹ and it sets the length of the film. The technophile German Band Kraftwerk, sometimes called ›The Beatles of Electronic Dance Music‹, staged themselves as machines in their video ›Wir sind die Roboter‹. Robot dolls, which had been specifically designed for the band, perform in a way reminiscent of Oskar Schlemmer’s depersonalized theatre. In their music video ›Radioaktivität‹ (1975/2005) technology itself is speaking. Appliances mimic the uniform noise of a Geiger counter, interfering radio waves or the dissonant radiation of uranium. The vocoder blasts: »I am the voice of energy« and »I am your servant and your master«. The words ›Chernobyl‹ and ›Harrisburg‹ flash up in huge letters as back ground projection leaving enough gaps for ›Fukushima‹ in the imagination of today’s viewer.

 

A fortunately harmless chain reaction is initiated by a tumbling domino in the music video ›This Too Shall Pass‹ (2010) by the American band OK Go, directed by James Frost. The domino puts a so-called ›Rube Goldberg Machine‹ into motion. The name relates to the pointlessly complex machines from Goldberg’s ›Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts‹ cartoons (1921 onwards). They consist of repurposed objects and materials that interact in a surprising and complicated way in order to perform comparatively simple tasks. Goldberg’s cartoon also inspired the video ›Der Lauf der Dinge‹ (1987) by the Swiss artists Fischli and Weiss.

 

In the digital age music robot groups like ›The Three Sirens‹ inhabit relevant Internet video platforms with their self made songs such as ›Robot’s Rock‹ (2002). Cameras mounted to the Sirens’ ›arms‹ allow a close look at electronically controlled picks and capos while they are sliding along the strings and creating a sound not unlike Jimi Hendrix. These days, the visualization of acoustic signals and the transformation of pictures into sounds are possible through software. The filmmaker Robert Darrol and the composer Sean Reed’s cooperation makes immaterial sounds impact on the immaterial vector graphics of the 3D software, creating new spheres in the process. George Antheil’s composition for the ›Ballet Mécanique‹ was newly performed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC by the New York group ›Lemur‹ in 2006. In the glow of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima and the radiation the workers there are exposed to, we ask ourselves: Where are the robots?

 

Hanna Nordholt & Fritz Steingrube