Synopsis

Keynote is a video on the cult of the digital, on the promises of salvation through technology and on mass manipulation. The original footage for 'Keynote' - both image and sound - is the (instable) videostream of an Apple inc. public relations event. In many parts the show reminded of intense political propaganda - haunting gestures, repetition of phrases, oversimplyfied facts: brainwash.

The footage has been reworked by the Fordbrothers provoking compression errors during the video stream that let the image-sequences collapse within themselfs, uncovering the digital wonderland in the very moment it was promised as an instable illusion built on pixels.

The result of this manipulation is an abstract, almost spooky appearence of the events (and IT-worlds) protagonists – Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Intel CEO Paul Otellini, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen, Head of Microsoft Apple Business Unit Roz Ho – in the structural re-arrangement by the Fordbrothers.

The 'message' still comes across this way, but it becomes general and is not longer linked to the computer-sales-event. It's being transformed to an analysis of physical and oral propaganda/manipulation/marketing vocabulary. The Fordbrothers attempt is to 'uncover' in an ironic way what is hidden behind the events perfect dramaturgy and choreography.

“Taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things i've done in my life ...” is a statement made by ‘Digital Lifestyle Guru’ and Apple CEO Steve Jobs (quoted in John Markoff’s book ‘What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computerindustry’). As the colors and style of ‘Keynote’ obviously indicate, it pays reference to psychedelic art and all counterculture inspired filmmakers like Robert Nelson, Bruce Conner, etc. ... Not by chance both the revolution of personal computing and the sixties counterculture spread out from California’s Bay Area (San Francisco, Berkeley, Silicon Valley).

The sound layer of Keynote consists strictly of samples taken from the same event as the image. They were captured the same way like the image. The sounds "bad quality" (because of the streaming process) was kept as something that fits the equally "bad quality" of the image and brought to new life and quality through a very complex arrangement according to the image.