More Radiohead Freebies

After the release of Radiohead's 7th studio album, In_Rainbows, Yorke an co. have collaborated with director James Frost to shoot (or not shoot) their video for their latest single from In Rainbows, 'House of Cards'. The video is not shot with a single camera or light. Instead a system, comprised of 64 lasers rotating in 360 degrees at 900 times per minute, captured spacial data which could then be analysed and sorted to create 3 dimensional images of the objects it was shooting. 2 systems were used. Initially, for close up, detailed scanning (Thom Yorke's face), a system by the name of Geometric Informatics was used. For more distant objects (Los Angeles suburb), an advanced version of the system, Velodyne Lidar System, was put to use.

Radiohead then released the code that was created to create the effects for Processing and C++ files. This will allow Radiohead fans to augment the video and their own touches to it. There is a House of Cards youtube channel where the collaborators can post their new versions of the video.

We have seen a similar concept when Nine Inch Nails made various songs/sounds available for fans to mix and to generate their own songs. NIN would then release their favourite mix(es) on their record. Bands which have a strong cult following will look to benefit from these innovative marketing ploys. Both bands recently split from their major label deals (Radiohead -EMI and NIN - Interscope/Universal) and are personally responsible for the marketing, promotion and funding their own productions. I think these these creative techniques are sure to grab the attention they need.

House of Cards is a nice tune, too...

I am in the middle of playing around with a few effects of the Radiohead song and will post up the results...

http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/

http://www.youtube.com/group/houseofcards