Boing Boing: OK Go is known for their complicated, flashy music videos, so when the quirky four-man band launched "Obsession" Thursday, the internet took notice. With over a million views already, the video is an impressive visual feast that uses walls of printers (567 of them to be exact) spitting out sheets of paper as its backdrop.
8 comments:
I clicked on this link not knowing what to expect, but I am in awe at how synchronized the entire video was, how colorful it was, and how coordinated this must have been. This is an idea I have never heard of before, but the stop motion that goes into it is really fascinating, as well as the printers themselves. There are some portions where they all had to be perfectly synchronized, and they were!! Because it is a video, it is easier to see the problem and fix it and redo it, unlike in theater, but it cannot be easy to configure 567 printers in perfect alignment and use the least amount of paper possible. I liked that they stated at the beginning that they recycled all of the paper and that the proceeds from this were going to benefit the earth. So along with really cool new technology, they were also helping organizations make the Earth a cleaner planet. Props to this video, and especially the person that figured out how to make 567 printers work in a perfect fashion.
I absolutely love the work that OK Go does. I think they are an incredibly creative team that comes up with wonderful bits of live action animation that no one else can do. Something so mundane and everyday as the action of a printer is not usually thought of as a medium for art (rather than its main function: printing, which obviously can be used for as much), but OK Go manages to make really impressive videos out of things exactly like that. The title of this article while a little misleading did get me thinking though about the sustainability of everything in the entertainment business... The amount of lumber that goes straight to the dump after a show strikes is just ridiculous. There is so much waste in what we do. I think it would be a great step for theatre and entertainment in general to go in a direction more environmentally friendly and sustainable. It is just disheartening to see so much being thrown away after being used to make truly beautiful art.
THIS IS SO COOL. I love all the creative music videos OK Go does, and this is no exception. It is amazing how the printers and the stop motion style of the video basically serve the same purpose as media projections of a video screen would. They create an amazing realistic illusion of depth in the space, especially starting at the 2 minute mark. It is such a creative way to bring a new twist to an old/popular thing. The detail in the design is also breathtaking. In the mirrored dance portion starting at 1:20 in the video, the lead singer's paper doppelgänger is also singing the words. The timing of the choreography and the paper blows my mind. I want to know how the idea for this music video was born. Were the printers were programmed to have the paper come out at that length to stay in the printer or was it just a physics coincidence? How was all of this programmed? How was the design translated to all the different printers? How much did all that ink cost? This idea is pretty obviously not cost effective for any sort of long term film production or live theatre, but it was used perfectly for this short video. My dad is the person who introduced me to OK Go and their music videos when I was a kid, and I am sending this video to him so he too can enjoy how awesome this is.
Wow, this music video is a lot. I literally could not finish the viedo becise it was hurting my eyes. That’s not to say that it want really cool. The way they printed some of the patterns on the many printers and had the lines match up and then when they printed their bodies life size and did stop motion animation-like tricks with these printed figures. That was cool. But this goes into question id the waste of paper for art justifiable. I don’t think I have an answer for this. Yes, they did recycle the paper and donate the funds, but they wouldn’t have needed to recycle all of that paper if they didn’t use it in the first place. I think artist need to start thinking about the environmental impacts of their art more, and not just the impact of the creation but also the impact of the disposal of the art.
I'd have to disagree with Rachel. OK Go is known for making videos that are visually stunning, that hold no bounds when it comes to production quality. I think work that resulted from the use of that paper was justified by the quality of the video. I may be a bit biased. I love OK Go. My favorite video of theirs has to be the video they shot for "I Won't Let You Down." They shot it all in one take, and it uses thousands of synchronized performers. It opens with the band in a photo studio, then moves out to a parking lot. the whole aesthetic of the video is almost indescribable. The aesthetic not only makes your jaw drop but is also jaw dropping. The organization for that video must have been a nightmare. The thing I love the most about OK Go is that they often use large arrays of non-traditional pixel boards. For this video, the pixel was the printer, for the other video, the pixel was a girl with an umbrella. They're just so cool.
They do this every single time that they drop a new music video they show me something that I had never even had thought of let alone thought of as possible. This is another masterpiece in terms of production quality. I remember the first video that I saw of theirs on the treadmills dancing back and forth I thought wow that such a simple set up and they were just able to control and map out their choreography so well that was impressive enough. But since then they have really stepped up the production aspects of their music videos going inside planes creating a rube Goldberg machine and now even mapping printers to project images that display the message of a music video. They are truly a unique group when it comes to the effort that they put in. I would really like to here what their initial creative meetings must sound like and talk to the production company that makes all of these amazing things possible.
My first thought before I watched this video was "Wow, that's a cool a idea but that's a waste of paper". Luckily before any of the printing even starts there's a message that says all of the paper has been recycled and a donation has been made to Green Peace, so it's good to see that they were conscious of the environmental impact of the video. I always love seeing how creative OK Go's music videos are, and they always are experimenting with new styles of video while retaining their same musical style. One of my favorite videos of their is This Too Shall Pass which was an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine that ended with the band being covered in paint. The time and effort put into that video show that OK Go really care a lot about the quality of the work they put out. I thought that this was was a very impressive video as well, and I'm very curious about how they were able to get all the printers to go at the same time.
OK Go has always blown me away with their incredibly visually stunning and well produced music videos. Their use of movement, color and pattern is second to none. This one is no different, but I must question their use of so much disposable materials. I agree that the image accomplished through the use of the printer paper in this video does look amazing, but where did it come from and how was it disposed of? I feel like too often we as artists use materials recklessly without considering their wider impact on the world and environments, so I would like to know that OK Go kept this in mind when producing this video. That being said, the work on display here is terrific, I just hope it is as environmentally friendly as it is beautiful.
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