Who would have imagined seeing a music video on Google Code? Welcome to the new age of data visualization.
Radiohead’s new video uses 3D images capture from two scanners – one a close-proximity 3D scanner from Geometric Informatics, another a multiple-laser array for the “exterior scenes” rotating in a 360-degree pattern. That yields just data, not anything you can look at, so the artists created the video itself using the open-source tool we love so much, Processing (site | CDM tag).
Cool so far. But the interesting part is that the tools and data are open-sourced and/or freely available:
View the data visualization in 3D and navigate with the mouse
Download the data in CSV form and do stuff with it using Processing source code and instructions
There’s a remix-friendly license in there, and a YouTube group to follow the results.
All the relevant links, plus the video itself:
RA DIOHEA_D / HOU SE OF_C ARDS [ Google Code ]
It’s also striking to notice that, despite the new-fangled technologies, the face stuff is remarkably similar in actual visual effect to the Rutt-Etra video synth (see also stories on Rutt-Etra restoration, Bill Etra restrospective). The process is entirely different: the Rutt-Etra processed the image directly via raster manipulations, whereas the Radiohead video is really a visualization of 3D data. But in some ways, I find the 1972 effect more appealing, and the visual relationship I believe is intentional.
Then again, part of the power of data visualization is that you can make it look like whatever you want. So it’ll be interesting to see how these techniques evolve.
Director: James Frost (Zoo Films)
Director of Photography: Von Thomas (Zoo Films)
Director of Technology: Aaron Koblin (whose work we’ve admired at the MOMA Design and the Elastic Mind show, via the now-defunct Yahoo Design Innovation Team, and elsewhere)
This is sweet. Will this wiggle toward the mainstream help entice my students to want to work in this arena? One can hope.
Wow. Pretty impressive. I'd be curious to know how much production for the video cost.. I wonder how it ranks compared to your average hip-hop mogul's video budget.
This is rad. Way to go Radiohead.
I hope NIN and Metallica start releasing data files now too.
My favorite part is that they've validated all the extraneous/"bad" data by leaving it in. Normally the point set is the first step in generating a surface, but they've stuck with a byproduct of the technology for its aesthetic properties.
Fun to note that the data distortion on the head shots are not part of the processing, but are a result of intentional disturbances using a mirror during the "shoot." Creative thinking during every step…
I noticed that the external scenes were shot (collected?) in south florida–anyone know where?
Are you familiar with uva, their video for colder is similar, again with extraneous data, http://www.uva.co.uk/latest/page/9
If you don't know them, have a good look through their projects there's some corkers in there!
Oh yeah, big fans of UVA.
Of course, I love the idea of making code open…
And yes, absolutely, they did some really brilliant stuff with distortion, etc.
Interestingly, MusicRadar doesn't have the same high opinion of the video: http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/radioheads…
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We have converted the csv data via Python to X3D and render it on our 8140×4000 pixel wall. The next days we will add Wiimote/Balance board interaction for controlling time and distortion.
See: http://i.document.m05.de/?p=500 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3lug2Wtzbk
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