TRON | Dutch Design Week
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Tue 20 Oct
During Dutch Design Week, the Philips Museum presents Philips Design. Soul & Science, an exhibition inspired by the work of Syd Mead. The American designer created hundreds of future concepts for Philips during the 1970s. He later brought that same imagination to some of cinema’s most famous science fiction worlds.
On Tuesday 20 October, we bring one of those worlds to the big screen with TRON.
Computer programmer and video game developer Kevin Flynn attempts to break into the computer system of his former employer. He wants to prove that executive Ed Dillinger stole his designs, but the Master Control Program digitises Flynn and pulls him inside the system. He enters the Grid, a world in which programs live like people and must fight for their survival.
Together with the programs Tron and Yori, Flynn takes on the Master Control Program. His escape leads him through gladiatorial contests, tanks and the now legendary Light Cycles, which leave glowing walls behind them as they race.
TRON was released in 1982, when computers were still abstract machines to most cinema audiences. Director Steven Lisberger gave the inside of a computer its own architecture, inhabitants and visual language. The film combined early computer animation with live-action footage, matte paintings and labour-intensive animation techniques. The result looked unlike anything audiences had seen before.
Lisberger assembled a remarkable design team. Comic artist Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud worked on the costumes and characters, while Syd Mead designed several of the film’s vehicles and structures. His Light Cycles became its most recognisable creation and continue to define the appearance of the entire TRON universe more than forty years later.
Mead’s involvement connects the film to Philips Design. Soul & Science at the Philips Museum. Between 1970 and 1979, he worked for Philips on products, workplaces and visions of the future. His designs constantly moved between what technology could already achieve and what still had to be imagined. TRON exists in precisely that space.
Explore Syd Mead’s visions of the future at the Philips Museum during Dutch Design Week, then enter the Grid yourself at Natlab on 20 October.
- Direction
- Steven Lisberger
- Cast
- Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner en Cindy Morgan
- Duration
- 96 min
- Year
- 1982
- Country
- USA
- Language
- English
- Subtitles
- Dutch
Make it a full night out
At Natlab, you don’t just come for the film. You come for the whole evening. Start with good food in our café-restaurant, then head into the screening room, and stick around afterwards for a drink.
Our kitchen works with fresh, seasonal ingredients and a menu that moves with the moment. Lunch, dinner or drinks: join us whenever it suits you.
Come early. Stay late. Make a night of it.