Google has partnered with Radiohead to promote the band’s music video for the song “House of Cards” from the album In Rainbows.
It’s definitely not your average video considering that there were no cameras or lights used: it’s all data. The video uses real time 3D recording, utilizing structured light and laser-enhanced scanners. Google is hosting the interactive video application at code.google.com and providing an iGoogle gadget for the video and application.
The video was created by music video director James Frost, and the technology was handled by Aaron Koblin, who has done several other visualizations including the well-known flight pattern visualization.
To capture the 3D images, they used a structured light scanner from Geometric Informatics for the close proximity shots of the singers and a Velodyne LIDAR scanner for the landscapes. The LIDAR scanner uses 64 lasers to scan an environment and create an XYZ point cloud of data, which is then rendered and read by 3D software.
Radiohead got a lot of attention when it released its album In Rainbows for free online. This led to a lot of speculation about the future of the music industry and the way people will purchase music.
Since Radiohead identifies itself with the open-source ethos, it’s releasing the video’s data so that developers can remix it and make their own variations of the music video. You can download the viewers and data from the Google Code project page.
That page also has an in-browser data viewer for viewing and interacting with the video. The player is Flash-based, so you can zoom with the mouse wheel, or click-and-drag to move it around. The page also has links to the YouTube video, the YouTube group (for user-remixed videos) and the behind-the-scenes video.
This project may have interested Google because the LIDAR technology used in the landscape and large environment shots is similar to the system Google uses for their Google Maps Street View project. It’s just a very different application of the same technology.
Also see Aniboom’s contest where cartoonists are encouraged to create music videos for Radiohead songs.
Comments
great concept for a video. this was a great catch thanks calley!
Sure, this is the way music promotion works today. What artist wouldn’t want to partner with Google?
Nath
http://www.themostpowerfulcompany.com
Pure Genius! It’s a pleasure to see artists pushing the envelope.
Google surely has moved into a lot of different areas…Check this page
http://vishtecho.blogspot.com
Radiohead’s at it again! This is a great idea, that further cements their place as the pioneer of digital engagement. With the nude remix campaign, they did a great job of giving their fans a new experience by letting them be one with the music. Before that, they had that whole pay what you want model which made just a little bit of noise in the music industry.
So when will other artists start to follow suit? Its a great idea, and more people have music/media making software than ever before!
Why not let fans have access to the stems so they can personalize the music however they want. This feels empowering and fuels the discover of the music — anybody who uses music software knows of the intimate relationship one has with his pro tools/garageband. And, on an monetization level, why not sell then stems as well as the full song? It just means more money! In an age where music sales compete against illegal music downloads, this would give the consumer another reason to purchase the stems, albeit until they became available on the black (free) market of digital music. I think radiohead prooved this one too by charting at #37 on Billboard because of the stems (highest since Creep!).
“So when will other artists start to follow suit? Its a great idea, and more people have music/media making software than ever before!”
So much of what radiohead does is not even close to being an option for your average band - at least as a business model. More power to Radiohead for rethinking their engagement with the majors and their relationship with their fans.. but it is only because they are established and affluent (in terms of capital and influence) that they can keep reinventing themselves like this - from release to release, video to video. I know dozens of struggling artists who are only seeing pocket change through online music sales, beyond that.. without a rabid fan base nobody is interested in paying money for “stems” of their output.
This commentary aside, damn is this a great video and collaboration!
That video is fantastic. This Radiohead visualization by Robert Hodgin is over the top fantastic: http://www.flight404.com/blog/?p=121
How much do you think they paid for such a placement?
Hey VishTecho - those are really interesting and insightful spa… comments you’re leaving on every post. Keep up the good work!
Wow.. talk about getting geeky with music
Wow - this is just *awesome*. I watched the video and it is stunning. Great post.
Click PLAY in the “visualization” page,
http://code.google.com/creativ.....iewer.html
you’ll get the video in 3D data, so you can move, pan, zoom…
A M A Z I N G
*I’m sure all of you missed it!
or just click “THE APP” in this post,
and then the Play icon
Radiohead is always the best at doing new things without trying to be the “coolest” the whole video is a great idea
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