On the evening of February 22, 2021, Daft Punk released his last video, Epilogue (Final Chapter), and announced his dissolution. From 1993 to 2021, the legendary band that lasted for 28 years has been suspended for a while.
Of all the discussions about Daft Punk, perhaps the most curious thing is the two helmets on their heads that have not been taken off for thousands of years. Since 2000, Daft Punk, who is in public view, has never taken off the helmet on his head.
Although there is constant speculation about this reason, the image of their robot has become more deeply rooted in people's minds. But entertainment gossip aside, the story of humans and robots doesn't seem as simple as a helmet.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > from the robot with the new pants to the daft Punk's helmet</h1>
Although almost all of today's top 10 EDM superstars have said that their favorite artist is Daft Punk. But in fact, this legendary band has not appeared on stage for almost a decade, and Daft Punk has performed once in the ten years from the Grammy Awards from 2007 to 2017, or at the Grammy Awards Ceremony.
For very young music fans, the last time I saw the helmet shape of the robot, perhaps on the Lexia stage in 19 years, I saw the helmet and robot gloves on Pang Kuan's head.
This seemingly curious robot shape is not the performance art of Pang Kuan's whimsy, he has had a dream since he was a child: to turn himself into a robot. He named the robot image he designed "two rooms and one hall" and filmed a series of story videos around this image.
However, in 2019, when artificial intelligence is more and more developed, young people may feel the most when they look at the huge robot shape on the stage, not the sense of futurism and technology, but a sense of retro with a strange style.
But when Daft Punk began to appear in front of everyone in the form of a robot 20 years ago, this shape was obviously directed at future technology and machinery. Because in the year they put on the helmet, they also released the album Discovery, which completely turned to electronic style.
(Cover of "Discovery")
In an interview with the media, his response was very interesting: "We didn't mean to pretend to be robots. It started at 9:09 a.m. on September 9, 1999. We were making music at the time, but it suddenly exploded. When we wake up, we find that we have become robots. ”
It is also such a serious nonsense that makes people speculate more about Daft Punk's helmet: some people say that it is because they were nervous when they first performed in front of the audience; some people think that they want fans to pay more attention to music and ignore themselves; others think that this is a kind of performance art; even more doubt that they have been disfigured, etc.
In addition, the shape of the Daft Punk robot helmet is also carefully designed, originally produced by Tony Gardner's Alterian company, and then cooperated with Marvel many times, and IronHead Studio, which participated in the work of Spider-Man and Black Panther, also participated in their helmet design.
The sci-fi, futuristic and electronic music expressions that robots carry seem to have some kind of coincidence, and their musical expressions continue to blur the boundaries between futurism and reality after wearing helmets. They would wear robot helmets and gloves to shoot MV, give media interviews, perform music live... The virtual and real worlds gradually merge in their robot helmets.
They no longer show their true colors, and in their own words: "It's so frustrating when you know how magic works." ”
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the history of human mechanical worship</h1>
However, the story of humans and robots is not as simple as a helmet, and the ideal of becoming a robot may start from human worship of machinery.
Around the sixteenth century, human beings began to vaguely realize that machinery could not only become another handiwork for man and open up a new world, but also pursue fun in the use of machinery and create some organ dolls that did not have a clear practical purpose.
They were originally just toys, but soon this toy with mechanical power and human form went beyond its pure entertainment function and began to create an even more crazy evil door, as if there were a world with an independent spirit.
Before the fall of the Ramses dynasty of ancient Egypt, there was a god statue in the temple of Thebes that could not only move, but also speak, and it often conveyed some messages about the monarch's approval or abolition as a god, and the people at that time were also convinced of god's will.
But in fact, the statue is a large organ doll, and the priests can manipulate the head and wrist of the idol according to their own wishes, so that the idol can say what they want. It was built by the priests of the god Amun, who were secretly in power at the time, so that they could adopt or abolish the young pharaohs at will.
Similar accounts have appeared in many ancient Greek stories, such as when some people saw gods moving, and even rumors that these dolls would secretly intercourse with humans or other gods at night if they were not bound.
In these ancient records of the mixed true and false nature of robot dolls, we will gradually see that after the birth of robot dolls, they gradually transcended the concept of ordinary playthings and began to derive another cultural meaning.
This is what the Japanese writer Ryuhiko Shibusawa wrote in The Cosmology of Dreams: "There seems to be a power in such a delicate device as a mechanism doll, which has no practicality between machinery and toys, which vaguely betrays the normal production order of this society and lures people into an incredible pleasure of deception." ”
Of course, this mysterious happiness will gradually transform into a productive force with the study of natural sciences and deeper understanding of human beings. By the eighteenth century, it was fully recognized that the clever use of machinery could gain power from which humans themselves did not have, and even rebel against nature and create a world that seemed freer to people at the time.
In a way, robots are the product of this combination of liberating human productivity with the spiritual world of early robotic dolls. In countless science fiction works, people are keen to imagine and discuss robots.
They have a similar appearance to humans, and have various abilities designed according to human will and beyond human beings, which also makes us have unlimited reverie about the existence of robots, and lets us even use human consciousness and ethics to examine the world of robots again and again.
And these, perhaps, are hidden deeper and more hidden cultural secrets under the steel shell of the robot and the helmet of Daft Punk.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > robot that wants to become human</h1>
The last video daft Punk announced to be disbanded, "Epilogue (Final Chapter)," is an excerpt from their self-directed film Electroma.
The more than an hour-long film doesn't have a single line, and it shows two silent robots driving from the suburbs to the town where robots live, eager to become human beings with the help of science, and after some manipulation, they have a human mask and hair, walking happily on the street, and the robots that pass by are throwing incredible eyes at them.
But soon under the sun's rays, the false faces of their faces began to melt and collapse, and a large number of robots began to chase after them, and the two robots fled into the wilderness, very sad. Eventually they drive back into the wild, one loaded with a time bomb by a companion and blows himself up into a pile of debris, while the other focuses on himself in sunlight and drifts away in the camera.
Daft Punk's robots have no language, no skin, not even a human face, but you can feel that behind that mechanical circuit board there are feelings and thoughts, and they even want to become human, even self-destructive.
The image of the robot may have added to the grim, industrial and modern feel of electronic music itself, making Daft Punk's scene look cooler, but they don't seem to be indulging in this industrial age appearance, and while discussing the human desire to become a robot, they also think about the story of the robot wanting to become a human.
Their presentation of electronic music is not a single cold industry, but more multi-dimensional, House, Techno, Disco, Funk these different dance music styles have different fusion and presentation in their music, in the distorted vocals to deduce a richer emotional layer.
They incarnate themselves as robots on stage, but maintain a human sobriety and temperature in the modern carnival of machinery and steel, just like the "Touch" they chose at the end of the farewell film, after the gorgeous and complex synthesizer sounds fade away, the sound gradually returns to the most basic instrumental music and clean vocals:
“hold on
If love is the answer you hold”
This gentle and unwavering love is the end of their legacy as a band to the world, but perhaps the same is the secret of two robots in the field of electronic music that have become legendary for 28 years.
It's a story about the Daft Punk helmet and a legendary path from another perspective.