Kraftwerk: I Was a Robot

Author: Wolfgang Flür
Publisher: Omnibus Press
ISBN: 1783239263
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 398

Book Description
Wolfgang Flür was vital cog in the Kraftwerk machine, galvanising the group’s electric drum sound throughout the 1970’s and propelling the rhythmic backbone of iconic albums such as Autobahn and Electric Café. I Was A Robot is a detailed, evocative account, written in Flür’s no-nonsense style. It takes us from his youth into the band’s formation and touring of their influential works, laying bare the acrimonious break-up and court cases that later followed. This book is the final word on Kraftwerk, their continued influence and what it felt like to be a Man-Machine. ”This is a first-hand account of human life inside the robot factory. A world that I could barely have imagined as a 16-year-old Kraftwerk fan stranded in a suburb on the wrong side of the river from Liverpool. A window into a world that I could never have imagined.” Andy McCluskey, OMD ”Kraftwerk is a myth. Wolfgang is for real. Thus handsome elder statesman of Electronic Music gives a lot of useful inside information about the Men-Machines.” Rudi Esch, ELECRI_CITY

Kraftwerk

Author: Wolfgang Flür
Publisher: Sanctuary Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Rock musicians
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Book Description
The controversial and uncompromising autobiography of Kraftwerk that the remaining members tried to stop publication of is now available in its full uncensored format.

Man, machine and music

Author: Pascal Bussy
Publisher: Firefly Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Book Description

Kraftwerk

Author: Uwe Schütte
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241320550
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 197

Book Description
The story of the phenomenon that is Kraftwerk, and how they revolutionised our cultural landscape 'We are not artists nor musicians. We are workers.' Ignoring nearly all rock traditions, expermenting in near-total secrecy in their Düsseldorf studio, Kraftwerk fused sound and technology, graphic design and performance, modernist Bauhaus aesthetics and Rhineland industrialisation - even human and machine - to change the course of modern music. This is the story of Kraftwerk the cultural phenomenon, who turned electronic music into avant-garde concept art and created the soundtrack to our digital age.

How to Wreck a Nice Beach

Author: Dave Tompkins
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612190936
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
The history of the vocoder: how popular music hijacked the Pentagon's speech scrambling weapon The vocoder, invented by Bell Labs in 1928, once guarded phones from eavesdroppers during World War II; by the Vietnam War, it was repurposed as a voice-altering tool for musicians, and is now the ubiquitous voice of popular music. In How to Wreck a Nice Beach—from a mis-hearing of the vocoder-rendered phrase “how to recognize speech”—music journalist Dave Tompkins traces the history of electronic voices from Nazi research labs to Stalin’s gulags, from the 1939 World’s Fair to Hiroshima, from artificial larynges to Auto-Tune. We see the vocoder brush up against FDR, JFK, Stanley Kubrick, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Kraftwerk, the Cylons, Henry Kissinger, and Winston Churchill, who boomed, when vocoderized on V-E Day, “We must go off!” And now vocoder technology is a cell phone standard, allowing a digital replica of your voice to sound human. From T-Mobile to T-Pain, How to Wreck a Nice Beach is a riveting saga of technology and culture, illuminating the work of some of music’s most provocative innovators.

Robots

Author: Gardner Dozois
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises
ISBN: 1625791518
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
Their future depends on oursã Here, some of the most advanced carbon-based minds in science fiction offer their own unique perspectives on the complex and conflicted future relationships between mankind and his most brilliant creations--some funny, some sad, some bizarre, some terrifying, and all beyond anything ever imagined. _Itsy Bitsy SpiderÓ by James Patrick Kelly _Robots Don't CryÓ by Mike Resnick _London, Paris, Banana . . . _ by Howard Waldrop _La MacchinaÓ by Chris Beckett _WarmthÓ by Geoff Ryman _Ancient EnginesÓ by Michael Swanwick _Jimmy Guang's House of GladmechÓ by Alexander C. Irvine _DropletÓ by Benjamin Rosenbaum _Counting Cats in ZanzibarÓ by Gene Wolfe _The Birds of Isla MujeresÓ by Steven Popkes _Heirs of the PerisphereÓ by Howard Waldrop _The Robot's Twilight CompanionÓ by Tony Daniel At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Robot

Author: Luca Beatrice
Publisher: 24 Ore Cultura
ISBN: 9788866483717
Category : Robots
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
-The definitive work on the robot aesthetic throughout history, from Ancient Greece to the present day -An inexhaustible source of inspiration for fashion, music and design From Ancient Greece onwards, humans have been swept up in a race to replicate and rebuild themselves. We design automatons that mimic human functions or improve on them, born from a desire to take evolution into our own hands, or even play God. In fact, every form of cultural expression has at some point investigated the rich and stimulating field of robotics, reaching different conclusions and outcomes every time. Robots have infiltrated our social consciousness. They are everywhere, from Leonardo da Vinci's drummer robot to the futurist man-machine; from Frankenstein to the works of Isaac Asimov and Philip Dick, inventor of the 'replicant'; from Edward Gordon Craig's theory of the actor as a super-puppet to Daft Punk and Kraftwerk, the krautrock band who used replica mannequins of themselves at the end of their concert. It doesn't end there, either. Robots feature heavily in cinema (Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and George Lucas's Star Wars saga, to name a few). They star in innumerable comic strips and cartoons (from Astro Boy to Marvel comics and Japanese manga). Fields like design, architecture and fashion, where creativity encounters industry, turned the robot into a commodity rather than a character. 'Robot' became a style in itself: kitsch and chic, fun and futuristic. Nowadays, when laptops, tablets and smartphones, the robots of the contemporary age, are in every house, car and pocket, the tin-and-steel robots of yesteryear have acquired an irresistibly vintage flavor, which makes them all the more desirable. Robot: A Visual Atlas from Ancient Greece to Artificial Intelligence appreciates this rich variety. Through tracking the conceptual development of the robot through western cultural history, it uncovers the roots of our fascination with artificial humanity.

Heidi's Horse

Author: Sylvia Fein
Publisher: Sylvia Fein
ISBN: 0917388054
Category : Child artists
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Book Description

Strange Stars

Author: Jason Heller
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612196977
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
A Hugo Award-winning author and music journalist explores the weird and wild story of when rock ’n’ roll met the sci-fi world of the 1970s As the 1960s drew to a close, and mankind trained its telescopes on other worlds, old conventions gave way to a new kind of hedonistic freedom that celebrated sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. Derided as nerdy or dismissed as fluff, science fiction rarely gets credit for its catalyzing effect on this revolution. In Strange Stars, Jason Heller recasts sci-fi and pop music as parallel cultural forces that depended on one another to expand the horizons of books, music, and out-of-this-world imagery. In doing so, he presents a whole generation of revered musicians as the sci-fi-obsessed conjurers they really were: from Sun Ra lecturing on the black man in the cosmos, to Pink Floyd jamming live over the broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing; from a wave of Star Wars disco chart toppers and synthesiser-wielding post-punks, to Jimi Hendrix distilling the “purplish haze” he discovered in a pulp novel into psychedelic song. Of course, the whole scene was led by David Bowie, who hid in the balcony of a movie theater to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey, and came out a changed man… If today’s culture of Comic Con fanatics, superhero blockbusters, and classic sci-fi reboots has us thinking that the nerds have won at last, Strange Stars brings to life an era of unparalleled and unearthly creativity—in magazines, novels, films, records, and concerts—to point out that the nerds have been winning all along.

Kraftwerk

Author: Sean Albiez
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441191364
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
When they were creating and releasing their most influential albums in the mid to late 1970s, Kraftwerk were far from the musical mainstream - and yet it is impossible now to imagine the history of popular music without them. Today, Kraftwerk are considered to be an essential part of pop's DNA, alongside artists like the Beatles, the Velvet Underground, and Little Richard. Kraftwerk's immediate influence might have been on a generation of synth-based bands (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, the Human League, Depeche Mode, Yello, et al), but their influence on the emerging dance culture in urban America has proved longer lasting and more decisive. This collection of original essays looks at Kraftwerk - their legacy and influence - from a variety of angles, and demonstrates persuasively and coherently that however you choose to define their art, it's impossible to underestimate the ways in which it predicted and shaped the future.