Daft Punk's Daft Card

I previously wrote an essay about Daft Punk's use of visual forms. Specifically it dealt with the representation of man as a robot. And I do really like how the duo creates high-profile work while playing around with notions of anonymity: sometimes I enjoy how it works conceptually more than what they do musically.

While the French twosome has consistently dabbled outside of traditional music formats with everything from animated films to coffee tables via a Gap commercial, I was always impressed by the 'Daft Card' that came with copies of, second album, Discovery. This gained entry to 'Daft Club': an online resource that allowed for the download of bonus material including extra tracks and remixes. It is telling that this was devised in 2001 as, the first available track, 'Ouverture' begins with the stupid electronic noise of a dial-up connection and remains a testament to the technology of the time [this content has since been released seperately as 'Daft Club', by the way].

The use of the credit card as a physical form also lends itself to discussion regarding the commodification of music yet - let's face it - it was still a handy little object that also fitted neatly into your wallet.