Daft Punk is Human After All

“All Hail our Robot Overlords”

One group that has been credited with transforming the dance music scene is composed of Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. At first glance, these two names are not easily recognizable by most because the two have taken great care to conceal their identities behind their iconic robot personas. Bangalter and Home-Christo are the masterminds behind the duo, Daft Punk – a musical tour de force of electro, techno, disco, and pop.

Bangalter and Home-Christo met when they were twelve years old while attending a secondary school in Paris. The two instantly became friends through their mutual passion for creating and producing music. This passion manifested into the guitar band, Darlin’, which Bangalter, Home-Christo, and another classmate formed. The trio played some gigs and released a few tracks in the span of six months. As the group gained success, Bangalter and Home-Christo began to lose their motivation for making music. They felt that they were creating work that was “mediocre” which did not allow them to reach their full creative potential. Eventually, the group disbanded and Bangalter and Home-Christo went on to form Daft Punk.

In 1997, Daft Punk released their debut album, Homework, which combined elements of house, techno and rave music. The album went on to be very successful, as it began to define and influence the era’s dance music scene. As the group went on to perform at venues, they would cover their faces using masks – thus begins the evolution of Daft Punk’s mystique. In 2001, Daft Punk released their sophomore album, Discovery. The album represents a transition from the more synthetic sound of Homework as it incorporates disco songs that were sampled from the 70s and 80s. While performing for Discovery, the group debuted their futuristic robot personas. The first costumes were seemingly crude. The masks featured a matrix of LED lights that could display text and had wires that were haphazardly soldered into place. As Daft Punk began to explore more creative projects in the early to late 2000s, the costumes evolved along with their music. The duo tinkered with the design of the costumes and hey became more refined and featured a more minimalistic design. Along with the concealing their identities, the costumes serve an artistic purpose. In an interview the two gave early in their careers, the duo argues that music is often associated with the physical appearance of the artist who creates it. They claim that by hiding their identities with costumes, they allow their work to “speak for itself.” In 2013, Daft Punk released one of their most commercially successful albums, Random Access Memories. The album received critical acclaim from fans and critiques alike and went on to with three Grammys, including album of the year.

Despite their immense popularity, much about the infamously private group remains unknown. Though, a rare interview that Daft Punk gave in the early 2000s offers the most vivid window into the duo’s creative process. Their work is intensely collaborative as they share the same goal: to make music that is “unique and personal.” Take, for instance, Random Access Memories, an album which took over five years to complete. Daft Punk’s true creativity begins to take form when analyzing the creation of Random Access Memories through the stages of the creative process, a concept explored at length by Dr. Nancy Andreasen in “A Journey into Chaos: Creativity and the Unconscious.” In the paper, Andreasen describes the states of the creative process as preparation, incubation, and production. In the preparation stage, creatives develop the skills that they need to succeed. For Daft Punk, the preparation stage comes from all of their previous works. Random Access Memories incorporates elements of the group's old albums to create a new and unique sound that reflects previous work. The next stage of the creative process, incubation, involves a time where the subconscious mind constantly makes connections and integrates new and old information. Since Random Access Memories took over five years to complete, this incubation period certainly played a part in their creative process. The final stage of the creative process, that Andreasen describes, is production. Bangalter and Home-Christo both say that the best part of making an album is not recording it but writing the music since it is at this stage where the two can be most creative. It is in this production stage where the duo integrates their experiences with previous projects to produce their work.

            With their unique style and the innovative manner in which they produce and perform their art, Daft Punk will surely please their fans for years to come.

Sources:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/daft-punk-all-hail-our-robot-overlords-190438/

http://www.electronicbeats.net/the-feed/watch-a-rare-early-00s-video-interview-with-daft-punk/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMs3qtWmwNs

“A Journey into Chaos: Creativity and the Unconscious” by Nancy Andreasen

Janelle Monáe: She's Got the Juice

Janelle Monáe’s existence—from her wardrobe to her music—defines her sense of self through reliance on her roots. She draws direct inspiration from her family forbearers, as well as from the larger traditions of Black American culture. However, the practice of using the uniforms and musical constructions of those who came before her flies in the face of what Todd Lubart considers to be Western creativity. He says that in the West, creativity is defined by what’s both novel—“original, not predicted, and distinct from previous work”—and appropriate—“is useful or fills a need.” Monáe’s work is purposely similar to previous work. Its genius, then, lies, in its appropriateness. Janelle Monáe’s pop culture presence is uniquely suited to the social politics of the early twenty first century.

Although Monáe has recently broken from her fashion modus operandi, for many years she was known for her red-carpet uniform of black-and-white. And it was a uniform indeed. In a 2013 interview with the Huffington Post, Monáe said, “I’m a minimalist by heart, but a lot of it had to do with me wanting to have a uniform like the working class, like my mom and my grandmother.” Interestingly, despite purposely attempting to recreate something from the past, Monáe’s wardrobe is instead something refreshing and unique; Vogue’s Janelle Okwodu observed that in replicating the uniforms of the past, “Monáe has crafted one of Hollywood’s most individual wardrobes.”

Monáe’s most recent album, Dirty Computer, has also drawn on the historical. Specifically, she wanted to include the legacy of Afrofuturism in her music. In an interview with Billboard Magazine, Monáe said she wanted to reflect and pay homage to Afrofuturism because “I feel like it’s a great time to be presenting the projects that you have in your heart. If you grew up being rejected or teased for being a science-fiction nerd or geek and you were black, to me this is the time you would be celebrated,” and for her, the genre of Afrofuturism (think Olivia Butler or Black Panther) is a perfect way to “[tell] our stories from our mouths and through our own eyes.” In this way, Monáe’s recycled sound profile is appropriate—it fills a need to tell stories in an individual-centric light.

Janelle Monáe’s work is very creative because of how appropriate it is to the current climate, and I believe that although it does not fit Lubart’s definition of novel, applying an old aesthetic in a new context does indeed create a newness that allows the work to be truly creative. By doing so, Monáe creates a fresh look on the history of herself, and fulfulls what she views as her artistic responsibility: “it’s about taking a journey that might not be often taken, and in doing so, being an example of the belief that we don’t all have to take the same coordinates to reach our destination.”

Photo: http://www.jmonae.com/

(Rebecca) Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice

Take a moment, remind yourself to take a moment and find yourself

Take a moment and ask yourself if this is how we fall apart

But it's not, but it’s not, but it’s not, but it’s not, but it’s not

It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay (Here Comes a Thought)

           

Rebecca Sugar, a 31-year old Maryland native, started off her career drawing comics for her high school’s newspaper, Silver Chips, and later attended the School of Visual Arts in New York for university. During her time there, she developed her skills as a director, writer, and animator in the field – her thesis film Singles won the award for Best Experimental Film within the school showing her talent as both animator and filmmaker (Amidi). After her graduation, Sugar continued her career as an artist by joining the Adventure Time team as a storyboard revisionist before quickly being promoted to writer, storyboard artist, and songwriter because of her immense talent. Later in her career at Adventure Time, Sugar started production on Steven Universe, the first show by a solo female creator in Cartoon Network’s twenty-year history.

            Steven Universe is an all-ages animated “Westernized Magical Girl” series airing on Cartoon Network and is a story that follows a group of warriors called the Crystal Gems that protect Earth from otherworldly threats. The team is made up of Garnet, Pearl, Amethyst, and the titular Steven Universe.

           Overall, the series is built on a science fiction world, with the Gems as gem-powered aliens and Steven Universe himself as the half-alien, half human protagonist. Nevertheless, despite the otherworldly nature of the series, it is about the coming-of-age story of Steven. What's most important is how this young boy lives his life surrounded by positive, female-coded role models and the importance of love, acceptance, and tolerance. Furthermore, the Gems serve as a perspective that allows the audience to experience reverse-escapism. Because the Gems are aliens that have never experienced humanity as a culture, they are fascinated with simple aspects of what makes up humanity and escaping the fantastical elements of space to experience reality. Ultimately, by having the Gems learn to understand the little things that make humanity beautiful, it also reminds the audience that fantasy shows like Steven Universe isn’t all about escapism and reality can be just as beautiful as fantasy.

            Although the series is extremely fantastical, the settings, characters, and themes are homages to Sugar’s life. Steven Universe is modeled after her younger brother, Steven Sugar. Beach City, Steven Universe’s hometown, is based on the beaches she and her brother used to visit in their hometown in Maryland. Furthermore, the show is best known for its diverse voice cast and its messages of love and acceptance. What draws so many millennials to the show is that Sugar, as a bisexual nonbinary person, opens the door for all people, young and old, to see themselves within the characters. For many people within the LGBTQIA+ community, there is little to no representation on TV. Children’s TV tends to be especially gendered and it can be hard for young children who see themselves as “different,” to fully understand their identity when there are no resources to tell them that what they are feeling is valid and real. Thus, what makes Steven Universe so unique is that it refuses to shy away from creating a “gender-expansive” universe that isn’t limited by a binary. The Gems, since they are not human, are nonbinary but are female-coded, similarly to Sugar. However, while this is important in context, it is not treated as significant within the story. Ultimately, the overall story is about how compassion is heroic and positive relationships can be both cool and exciting to children.

            In Sugar’s creative process, she never creates with an ulterior vision in mind. Her first step in creating characters or writing is to “just start” without a plan in mind. With this, her creations come to life without force and she “seems to want to draw someone like this.” This reflects Andreasen’s idea of the creativity and the unconscious in which creation is done in stages. Specifically, Sugar’s first step in creating is reflective of incubation in which the mind is wandering freely without censorship.

            The show is creative and groundbreaking because of its willingness to push the typical boundaries of exposing children to difficult topics and increasing visibility of the LGBTQIA+ community. Within the show, characters talk about their anxieties and practice mindfulness together. There is a female-coded Gem pining after the mother of Steven Universe. Two female-coded Gems marry each other. Additionally, the theme of reverse-escapism isn’t something you normally see in a show for kids, but it can be incredibly important in that although there can be some level of fun within the adventures had by the Crystal Gems, there’s nothing that’s worth more than peace and love on the planet Earth.

Works Cited:

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/ideas-commentary/rebecca-sugar-is-cartoon-networks-first-solo-woman-show-creator-71157.html

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/brewtv/singles-rebecca-sugar-15727.html

https://me.me/i/rebecca-sugar-walks-us-through-her-creative-process-for-steven-5081699

https://www.inverse.com/article/24463-rebecca-sugar-steven-universe-music-songs

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/herocomplex/la-et-hc-rebecca-sugar-steven-universe-music-20170608-htmlstory.html

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/06/steven-universe-creator-rebecca-sugar-on-the-shows-fantastic-music-and-its-new-soundtrack/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/steven-universe-creator-rebecca-sugar-is-an-idealistic-trailblazer/2013/11/01/fe622da2-4338-11e3-a751-f032898f2dbc_story.html

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/1/15657682/steven-universe-rebecca-sugar-cartoon-network-animation-interview

“A journey into chaos: creativity and the unconscious” Mens sana monographs vol. 9,1 (2011): 42-53.

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/13/628885509/the-mind-behind-americas-most-empathetic-cartoon