Daft Punk

Daft Punk Live
(photo sources 1/2)

On Saturday I went to see Daft Punk headlining at the Wireless Festival in Hyde Park London. Why do I blog this? The live show is simply stunning, an audio visual treat.

We were extremely squashed in down the very front, eagerly anticipating the curtain to be drawn back. After about 30 mins, the curtain came back and the duo emerged in their trademark robot costumes. Standing inside a large pyramid, building up the crowd from low level lighting effects, to a full onslaught of everything they had. The pyramid was an LED screen along with its supporting frame, the hanging structure either side and a very large display wall behind them. Everything worked really well and there was lots of visual variety between each song.

I didn’t take any videos or photos of course. Everything I found on youtube is shaky at best, apart from these Channel 4 videos (part 1 / part 2). Various more live videos.

The encore was just fantastic. two red lines were released from the pyramid, travelling around the outer frame like a game of snake, entering back into the pyramid at the base, then upwards until the lines connected with the artists, transforming their robot costumes into glowing red outlines. Footage after the transformation here.

Daft Punk Helmet

The leather jumpsuits were designed by Hedi Slimane, who has posted some lovely back stage photos from Wireless here.

Company LED Effects created the LED helmets shown here. This pdf describes some of the process. The circuit boards and drivers are contained within the back pack, and a wrist style power glove for control.

Here is a video showing the helmets. You can also see a few of the effects in this interview and in this old Gap ad. How about a homemade daft punk helmet (video).

Posted on June 20th 2007 under AudioVisual, Light, Performance