Internet killed the Video Star... or did it?
Just saw the new Radiohead video for House of Cards from their album In Rainbows and was totally blown away.
Fans of Radiohead remember that this album was released earlier this year and was available DRM-free as a download at your own price from Radiohead's official website. I mean it was literally a donation based project. I remember having a long discussion with a friend when this album came out. This was also the time when the writers' strike was at its peak.
His position was that the Internet and its vast reach is diminishing artists' ability to create and disseminate their work and only enriching the Record companies. In fact, new kinds of media distribution outlets like Apple, Microsoft etc. were jumping in on the game to share the profits with Sony, Virgin, HMV etc. and artists were getting lesser and lesser than before.
My position was that it had never been easy for artists and from the days of playing local bard in penury to today was not a result of benign companies supporting or helping artists. It was an ever growing world wide access to their work which allowed them better economic success and a more direct relationship to their fans. But this kind of scenario required artists to adapt and problems arose when the change was coming too quickly for some.
In other words, all said and done, the Internet is not the culprit but a volatile catalyst for a different kind of world. Whether that world is good or bad... well that's a separate debate. Besides, there's really no going back.
So why do I bring this up? Because I think Radiohead is one of those artists who have tried to adapt in some very creative and path-breaking ways. Consider this music video. You might be interested in the making of this video shown below:
Apart from the experimentation that no cameras were used in the making of this video, even more interesting to me is that Radiohead and James Frost (the director of video) chose to release the captured data for the video. They encourage you to manipulate the data using your own modifications. The video is made using Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR and the data has been released under a creative commons licence.
This is exciting because here's an artist looking at ways to create a 2-way dialog with its fans which breaks some of the barriers of the old-style music industry. It also means that open source licenses such as creative commons have a very pivotal role to play in breaking traditional approaches of corporate profit-making setups which are really redundant in today's society. While this may not be the only way to break free from centralized corporate power it does show a viable way in which the artist, the artisan, the creator can have a direct and open relationship with his/her end consumer.
And yes, did I mention that I absolutely love this track:) Now back to my own experiments with GeoVideo.
