“They were so stiff, they were funky,” Detroit-based DJ and producer Mr Carl Craig once said of Kraftwerk. The techno pioneer was describing the sound of the band from Düsseldorf and their impact on the dance scene in far-off Motor City, but this statement could also apply to the way they looked and dressed.

Influenced as much by the Bauhaus art movement as the funk of Mr James Brown and the raw punk that pre-dated the emergence of techno in Detroit, Kraftwerk took the mesmerising, often monotonic sound that sprang out of West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, lazily labelled Krautrock by the British music press, and forged what they called “robot pop”. The band embraced technology with homemade instruments, deconstructed synthesisers and a recording studio-cum-industrial complex – Kling Klang Studio, reportedly cut off from the outside world – which they turned into a sound laboratory.

Their sparce lyrics and rhythms captured the alienation that many experienced then, as now, in the urban environment. At their core, however, was an optimism for the future and a celebration of a singularity: a transhumanist fusion of flesh and technology, The Man-Machine. This ideal reached its zenith in their live shows, where the four band members dressed identically, at one with their consoles.

“Kraftwerk’s visual identity was so central to what they were about,” says Ms Maria McLintock, co-curator of the exhibition Electronic: From Kraftwerk To The Chemical Brothers, which has just opened at the Design Museum in London. “Post-WWII, everyone was so infatuated with technology as a tool to produce sound, less so as a tool to create a visual live environment. It took a while for others to catch up.”

The band’s imprint is clearly integral to the dance scene, where artists have grappled with turning music made by lone figures hidden behind computers into an engaging live performance. But 50 years on, the template Kraftwerk laid down hasn’t just influenced electronic music, it has infiltrated nearly every aspect of modern culture, from cinema to art, gigs to clubs, hip-hop to pop and fashion.

Acts such as Daft Punk have taken the theme of technology further, encasing themselves in robotic costumes at the centre of multi-media experiences. Others have tried to remove themselves from the picture entirely with vast displays that focus on the music, rather than the artist. The Design Museum’s show features an installation by Messrs Adam Smith and Marcus Lyall, who create The Chemical Brothers’ on-stage visuals. The piece puts visitors in the middle of their work in a way The Chemical Brothers themselves never are.

Then there are artists who revel in this sense of mystery. Mr Richard D James (aka Aphex Twin, among numerous other alter egos), in particular, seems to have taken perverse pleasure in turning the concept of the faceless producer on its head by sticking his visage on images of grotesque children, bikini-clad models and even the topography of his native Cornwall. The prosthetics used in the “Windowlicker” video feature in the exhibition.

For others, the anonymity, not to mention androgyny, of the genre has provided a platform to explore themselves. Ms McLintock gives the example of the Detroit techno scene Kraftwerk inspired. “It was very much an African-American, working-class, queer, Latinx community,” she says. “Those with a lack of opportunity in the US. People such as [DJ] Jeff Mills, who has a real extra-terrestrial theme running throughout his music – this Afrofuturist utopian dream where African communities can thrive. Technology and the anonymity that technology provides is such an interesting space for oppressed communities to express their identity.”

Perhaps more than any other recent youth movement, the dance scene has ushered in a democratisation that transcends the music. The aftershocks of the late 1980s acid house explosion can still be felt today, most notably in the fashion shows of the past few seasons, where oversized cuts, tie-dye prints and smiley logos have been hard to escape. Electronic features pieces from Raf Simons’ SS20 collection, which reappropriates the prancing horse logo from Belgian music institution R&S Records. “This harks back to this idea in dance music of sharing and sampling and assemblage,” says Ms McLintock.

There is, however, an elephant in the room – one that’s not part of any DJ’s mixed-media showcase. The exhibition is the Design Museum’s first since reopening, post-lockdown. Billed as “safe and sound”, visitor numbers are limited and masks are mandatory (fittingly channelling the spirit of early-1990s Manchester act Altern-8). With the clubbing scene on hold and rave culture once again demonised, somehow a trip to a museum is now the closest thing we have to experiencing dance music as a communal event. But the show also represents, as Kraftwerk did, hope for the future.

Ms McLintock says she wants Electronic to act as a “call to arms”, a celebration not just of the artists, but efforts to support electronic music itself, from the historic struggle against the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act to the more recent push to reopen London nightclub Fabric and Resident Advisor’s #SaveOurScene campaign. “It’s an immersive, joyful, emotionally moving exhibition,” she says. “I’d love it if people left the show and thought, I’m going to go to a record store or pay to see a virtual DJ set or donate.”

Perhaps now, then, is our chance to save the most forward-thinking of musical genres before it, too, becomes obsolete.