House of Cards

Thanks to Chad for passing along this video, and thanks for the vote of coolness in thinking that I had already seen it. In fact, I had not and had no idea what was going on with it until I investigated further.

The whole video was shot without cameras or lights, which in passing sounds slightly unimpressive and takes some time to digest. This is not a digital recreation of the actors in the video characteristic of the Pixar productions we are all now accostomed to. Instead, the shapes and movements are literaly recorded using 3D scanning technologies at two scales: one that uses structured light(?) to small movements and fine grain topography, and a second to get record landscapes.

Radiohead has not only (again) embraced technology for its own expression but has taken steps to allow fans to use play with the technology themselves. There is a full google-hosted section of a site with info about the video, the technology and the code and an app that allow you to manipulate the data (the video) and create. There is also a making of the video (if we can call it that) that should be checked out. This follows their previous experiment with the song Nude, where they released snippets of the song to the world and asked for remixes.

Pitchfork says it all better and with much longer wind than me