Headphones and 3-D spectacles are essential for the recently re-opened, fully immersive, audio / visual / multi-sensory, hyper-experiential exhibition ‘Electronic: From Kraftwerk to The Chemical Brothers’ at the Design Museum, London.
The showcase is a celebration of contemporary club culture, artwork and ephemera and a history of electronica-related equipment. Experience The Telharmonium (aka the first ever synthesizer or ‘the Victorian Spotify’) from 1901 through to a personally curated reimagining of French electronic music maverick Jean-Michel Jarre’s recording studio, right up to the cutting edge, tripedal synthesiser custom-made for Detroit DJ Jeff Mills by Yuri Suzuki, which looks more like an X-fighter dashboard than a traditional drum machine.
Kraftwerk
Former Wallpaper* guest editor Ralf Hütter, co-founder of Germany’s Kraftwerk, is represented by a sequence of still-captivating 3-D film shorts from the band’s 2017 tour. Art and graphic design – for vinyl record sleeves, posters, streaming imagery, rave and club flyers – is showcased as a visual response to the music, an extension of the electronic artist and their genre.
Union Rave, 1995
Fusing disciplines
The exhibition looks at how artists like Christian Marclay, Andreas Gusrky, Peter Saville, Mark Farrow and Studio Moross fuse typography, photography and fine art with the contemporary electronic soundtrack’s beats, bleeps and squelches. Norway/USA-based design outfit Non-Format’s work for London record label Lo Recordings is a dazzling exercise in typographic invention with studio founders Kjell Ekhorn and Jon Forss creating unique fonts and dynamic monochrome graphics for each of the label’s many vinyl releases.
Exhibition design
An adaptation of the hugely popular exhibition from Musée de la Musique - Philharmonie de Paris, Electronic’s original concept and 3D design is helmed by Paris- based 1024 Architecture, the studio contributing its own exhibit in the form of a robotic sculpture titled ‘Walking Cube’. Aurally sensitive and activated by ambient beats, the shape shifting cube’s jerkily diverse transformations are driven by air-powered mechanics prepared and executed with brutal force. ‘A demonstration presenting the chaotic possibilities in the deconstruction of a common and minimal form,’ explain the cube’s designers.
Got To Keep On (2019), installation by The Chemical Brothers and Smith & Lyall
Working in collaboration with London’s All Things Studio, 1024 Architecture also conceived the truly mesmerising CORE light installation, a three dimensional soundwave of multicoloured rods inspired by the electronic music experience’s narcotic, synaesthetic perceptions.
The Chemical Brothers
Ending on a high we take a trip into the visual world of The Chemical Brothers’ Smith & Lyall-designed live shows where doomy and dreamy, IMAX-size film imagery and weapons grade laser lights interact to viscerally devastating effect. At this, the exhibition’s peak, uplifting music pumps while giant and vivid, almost tangible, cuddly/creepy Leigh Bowery-esque figures dance amongst the visitors. The Design Museum has never looked, or sounded, so good.
Untitled Vanity Flight Case, 2005
Core
INFORMATION
Electronic: From Kraftwerk to The Chemical Brothers is open until 14 February 2021. designmuseum.org
ADDRESS
224-238 Kensington High St
Kensington
London
W8 6AG
-
Year in review: the top 10 cars of 2024, selected by transport editor Jonathan BellWhat are our cars of the year? We’ve scoured the archives to unveil the machines that most impressed us over the past 12 months, from retro revivals to high-tech EVs
-
An Indian mud house - and more, on Sketch Design Studio's natural material wondersSketch Design Studio in Rajasthan, India does wonders with the simplest ingredients
-
Experience this Singapore apartment’s Zen-like qualities and cocooning urban havenWelcome to Singapore apartment The Rasidence, a spacious, Zen-like interior by Right Angle Studio
-
‘R for Repair’ at London Design Festival displays broken objects, re-formedIn the second half of a two-part exhibition and as part of London Design Festival 2022, ‘R for Repair’ at the V&A displays broken objects, re-formed
-
‘Finding quality through the act of making’: Pearson Lloyd celebrates 25 years of designPearson Lloyd’s show ‘Change Making’ reflects on past designs from its archives, showcasing the influences on and evolution of the studio, from furniture design to the NHS
-
Tom Dixon marks his studio's 20 years with a show of design experimentsMushroom, cork, steel coral and more: Tom Dixon showcases an overview of his design experiments as he celebrates his practice's 20 years
-
Porro unveils new London showroom at Coal OfficeLondon Design Festival 2022: industrial architecture meets pure geometries in the new Porro showroom, taking over a space within Tom Dixon’s Coal Office to showcase the brand’s systems and furniture
-
Vitra unveils new London home in the Tramshed, ShoreditchLondon Design Festival 2022: after a year-long renovation, Vitra opens the door to its new showroom in the heart of Shoreditch
-
Mudlarking beside the River Thames inspires The New Craftsmen’s makersLondon Design Festival 2022: The New Craftsmen’s new collection, ‘Claylarks’, features work from a group of creatives inspired by a River Thames mudlarking expedition
-
One tree, ten designers: SCP presents The One Tree Project at London Design FestivalLondon Design Festival 2022: SCP enlisted ten British designers to create furniture and objects from a felled ash tree from founder Sheridan Coakley's Hampshire garden
-
London Design Medals 2022London Design Medals 2022 are awarded to costume designer Sandy Powell, architect Indy Johar, researcher Joycelyn Longdon and photographer Sir Don McCullin
