Kraftwerk performs at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, on July 6, 2022. Derek Tobias/STAFF.

SAN FRANCISCO — After more than two years of pandemic-related delays, German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk brought their 3D concert experience to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium Wednesday night. The multimedia spectacle was part dance party, part movie screening and part trip into the computer from “Tron.”

There were no opening acts, no T-shirt canons, no small talk from the stage, no guitars, drums or any of the usual trappings of a rock and roll concert. Instead, concertgoers were given 3D glasses as they entered the spartan auditorium, where they were confronted by a minimalist stage setup: just four podiums placed on the stage before a huge screen. The crowd cheered as the lights dropped and a series of numbers appeared on the screen before launching out at you like a 3D monster from an old Saturday matinee.

Kraftwerk performs at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, on July 6, 2022.

The four members of Kraftwerk took up their positions at the podiums, clad in tight black bodysuits on which different colored grids were projected. The look was enough like Mike Meyers playing Deiter in “Sprockets” skit on “Saturday Night Live” to be a little bit funny, but visually striking and cool-looking enough to transport you to some liminal place between our past and future.

The quartet opened its set with “Numbers” and “Computer World,” from its 1981 album of the same name. The music was complex, intricate, mechanistic and, yet, soulful. On the screen behind the band, “Matrix”-like columns of fluorescent green numbers and letters twisted and warped. Stationed at thei podiums, the band was nearly motionless. It was impossible to tell if the music was being made live, and if so, who was doing what. For all the you knew, they could’ve been solving the day’s Wordle up there.

But the music, relentless as the songs ran into one another, held the audience enraptured. Clad in denim and in at least a couple cases cowboy hats, the crowd was surprisingly light on black turtlenecks and would’ve perhaps looked more at home at a monster truck rally. Nonetheless, the audience cheered and clapped for hits like “Autobahn,” “The Model” and “Pocket Calculator.”

Kraftwerk performs at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, on July 6, 2022.

Founding member Ralf Hütter’s vocals, delivered through a discreet and modern looking headset mic, were invariably blended with keyboards or otherwise processed, further blurring the boundary between man and machine.

While the relationship between human beings and technology is often rather simply portrayed as either dystopian or utopian in future fiction, Kraftwerk posits a more nuanced symbiosis in much of its music. While epic jam “Autobahn” hinted at the freedom and efficiency of future travel with its propulsive motorik-driven beat, during “Radio-Activity” (from the 1975 album of the same name), locations of nuclear accidents appeared on the screen, suggesting there is a price to be paid for our modernity.

Kraftwerk’s vision of man and machine was probably best expressed on songs from 2003’s Tour De France Soundtracks. While playing selections from the album, black and white footage of old bicycle races appeared on the screen. It’s this synergy of man and machine, the way each improves the other, that lies at the heart of Kraftwerk’s artistic vision.

During the encore, mannequin-like “robots” dressed in red shirts and black ties, and designed to resemble individual members of the band, moved with a glitchy grace. As Kraftwerk performed “Pocket Calculator,” near the end of the encore, countless phone screens rose from the audience. The band, positioned between the screen and the audience, seemed to exist both live and virtually. The music, a cloud of synthesized bleeps and bloops generated in circuit boards and made audible by magnets, felt fleshy and alive.

One by one each member of the band left his podium before taking a bow and leaving the stage. Ralf Hütter left the stage last, to the loudest applause of all.

Follow photographer Derek Tobias at Instagram.com/simmonstobias.