refractal

Shot in three-dimensions, using 64 laser beams scanning a 360 degree radius approximately 900 times per second, Radiohead today released their music video for the song House of Cards off of In Rainbows. The result is a very old school, almost Atari-class rendering of the scene. A result somewhat disturbing for the animus it inserts into an ephemeral cyberscape.

In a statement Yorke said: “I always like the idea of using technology in a way that it wasn’t meant to be used, the struggle to get your head around what you can do with it. I liked the idea of making a video of human beings and real life and time without using any cameras, just lasers, so there are just mathematical points - and how strangely emotional it ended up being.”’

The technology is ripe with potential applications because it allow one to map out point by point the exact dimensions of an environment over time. It indeed completely abstracts physical space into mathematical relationships between points, looking at distances and angles and not objects and shapes. Such data sets could give enterprising computational modelers an interesting way to represent and study interior spaces. Ha, perhaps an algorithm for feng shui and an end to bad design will come from this?

Also on the google code website where the source is being hosted, one can watch an interactive version of the video that allows them to manipulate camera angle and perspective during the performance.

For a short making of video, see below: