The construction of Europe cannot be understood without technology and its networks. The Roman roads through which people, goods and ideas circulated took Roman law to all corners of the empire. Nor is it understood without the medieval network of roads to Santiago, a proto-internet that connected the knowledge servers of the time; universities such as those of Bologna, Cambridge, Paris, Salamanca or the Estudi General de Lleida.
With the railway, the changes were not only of scale; more goods, more people and more ideas in a shrinking Europe, but also changed the times. Long-distance trains kept three hours: the one at the departure station, the one at the arrival, and the one at the train. The telegraph network made them one. The Europe of trains is also the Europe of cafés: nodes in a network of cultural and political exchange where European values ??are born, grow and are reproduced.
If we close the focus even more we will reach the 20th century, the automobile and the ubiquitous road network. We change the environment to adapt it to the new medium and then it is the new medium that changes us: we buy a 600, we rent a little apartment on the beach and the Swedish women arrive. More European construction. Today’s Europe would not be understood without the SEAT 600, the FIAT 500, the Renault 2CV, the Volkswagen beetle.
Who has best glossed this European construction based on technology has been the German music group Kraftwerk. Born in 1968 in Düsseldorf, they are the creators of an unmistakable robotic electronic sound that changed music forever. Coming from the industrial region of the Rur and born in the post-war period, they decided to dispense with the references of Anglo-Saxon culture and create a new popular music. They had no choice but to go back in time and recover all the dreams that Nazism had destroyed: the Bauhaus movement and German expressionism. Kraftwerk members have never defined themselves as artists or musicians but as music workers. They regard their electronic industrial music as popular music, the sound of the industrial environment in which they grew up.
Idolized by David Bowie, Iggie Pop and Michael Jackson, their influence has been definitive in the birth of New York hip-hop, British new wave, Detroit techno, Chicago house, Italian disco, Japanese techno-pop or the euro-dance. They are the fathers of electronic music and the godfathers of countless musical genres. Those who are fans already know that they are more influential than the Beatles, those who are not, will fall off the horse.
Kraftwerk has been revolutionary in many ways: the use of synthesizers when everyone else used guitars; singing in German when he was still perceived as a nationalist; static performances instead of the frenetic movement and prevailing sweat; his androgynous style compared to that of the hairy rock machos; and above all the permanent ode to technology and progress instead of singing to peace, little birds and hippie love. But within the framework of the geopolitics of the European construction and with the perspective of time —55 years of career— his work acquires even greater relevance.
Autobahn is the theme that in 1974 propelled them to stardom. 22 and a half minutes long (as long as vinyl allowed) is a sonic journey through the German Autobahn, with engines, horns, faster pace, level crossings and music on the radio-cassette. A journey to freedom with no speed limit. I recommend that you put it in the car while driving on the highway, if it is in Germany, the better.
From 1976 it is Trans-Europe Express, an ode to great train journeys (first class, yes), to speed and to the changing landscapes of a Europe under political and technological construction. The mechanical rhythm, the minimalist percussion and the doppler effects place us inside a train of the trans-European rail network. The few lyrics take us to a meeting on the Champs-Elysées, to a stop in Vienna for coffee and to his arrival in his native Düsseldorf. Do not listen to it if you are traveling nearby.
Equal parts technology chroniclers and visionaries reached the zenith of both with the 1981 album Computer World. Conceptual like the previous ones, it speaks of the impact of computing on society years before personal computers arrived. The German version of the Computer World topic reads the equivalent of: “Interpol and Deutsche Bank, FBI and Scotland Yard/DGT and the Federal Criminal Police, have our data.” Ralf Hütter, one of the founders of Kraftwerk said: “Now that it has been penetrated by microelectronics, our entire society is computerized and each of us is stored at some information point by some company or organization, stored in numbers.” Surveillance capitalism in 1981, before computers, the internet and mobile phones.
The Man-Machine album is from 1978 and immediately before Computer World. The album is a statement of intent right from the Soviet-inspired typographic cover in the style of El Lissitzky, which by the way appears in the album credits. The album opens with The Robots where the members of the group claim to be robots in the original sense of the term: as indefatigable workers who help us in our most mundane tasks, in their case making popular music. For its launch, they created robots in the image of each of the members, which they presented at press conferences and which they performed live to the great delight of young and old.
The album culminates with the celebrated Man-Machine, an intellectual exercise that explores Nietzsche’s idea of ??the Superman; a visit to the idea of ??how technology extends our capabilities. Ralf Hütter said in an interview that they touched the machines but that the machines also touched them, that they did not treat them as slaves but as colleagues. It was 1978, there was no internet, no personal computers, no web, no mobile phones, no social networks, no artificial intelligence. Listen Kraftwerk. Also his music.
