Creative Boom: In a cavernous Budapest train station, after 36 failed attempts and with time running out, take 37 finally captured what many thought impossible: a perfect single-take music video featuring 25 robotic arms moving in precise synchronisation with OK Go's latest track, Love.
This was pretty amazing to watch. This video reflects something that I also find great about our school, the mix of science and art. I think this video is a perfect reflection of that. By having all of their robotic arms perfectly synced up with the music not only shows the merge or the arts and stem but also shows the amount of effort that went into this video. Not only did you have to program everything and choreograph this to work but you also have to take into account the whole production crew, camera crew, people in the shot and other helping hands. For everything to go smoothly with no editing or cuts is extremely difficult. In my senior year of high school, I took a film class. In this class we were tasked to make many films including ones with no cuts. It was extremely hard to do so I can only imagine what it took for something like this to work out!
ReplyDeleteThis was incredible. I have never seen these kinds of effects or illusions done without editing, and even better, this was done in one shot. I love the use of robotic arms, I don’t think I have ever seen that used in this industry. But it reminds me of something one of the professors here at CMU tells us in almost every class, nothing was ever really made just to use for entertainment. However, he is always just talking about tools, so I love the creative thinking behind the use of mirrors and robotic arms and putting them together. It’s also really cool how the math is involved and how they had to sync the robotic arms to the BPM of the music. Also, it was interesting how they mentioned the differences between how a human and a robot moves and how they experimented to see robots' potential to match human movements.
ReplyDeleteAutomation is a growing art in the theatre industry. While this solution was clearly bespoke I still think that this marks a massive step forward for automation as a department within theatre. In many situations automation is deemed too costly and a more traditional solution is found. In this case, as the article states the precision required was beyond what could be consistently attained by a human stage hand. I believe that in the coming years there will be some plays or musicals that can benefit from this kind of precision. That’s not to say that I think that robots will fully replace human stage hands in the near future, with robots every movement must be precalculated and programmed while human stage hands are able to take agency and can understand instructions in plain English. Due to the high cost and programming difficulty I believe that this technique will remain more or less a party trick for some time but given a show that it would fit with could shine.
ReplyDeleteI like hearing news of robots and current technology being used in the arts not to generate the art but to assist in its creation. The video is very impressive and the photos in the articles of the robot arms doing their job are awesome. The marriage between art and emerging technology to me is very susceptible to becoming dull and borderline plagiarism–but uses of robots like OK Go used them is a perfect example to me on how we can use them for good. Far too often there are articles on generative AI being used to control major parts of the music or entertainment production and it is sad to see. I think emerging technologies are inevitable within the art and theatre industry, but there is still hope for setting boundaries in the manner in which they’re used. I don’t personally use AI, but I think if people must when creating content a good example is having AI summarize research articles you’re using to learn, or helping you organize a task list for the project ahead.
ReplyDeleteHoly $hit! That was incredible! I love music videos just like as a genre, and I think there is something really beautiful about them when done well. This was something next worldly. I loved it for the true complexity of the mirrors and robotic arms, but I also loved it for the fact that we saw them running around in the background of the frame. It made it feel very human and alive and like true art that might have been lost if they were hidden. I think that if we hadn’t seen the people running around, it would have felt almost sterile, which would not have worked well for the message of Love. It was truly a work of art and an incredible demonstration of how robots can be utilized to create art. This makes me want to make a music video with a bunch of mirrors right now.
ReplyDeleteThis is mine, I didn't mean to post it as anonymous. That was my bad. Holy $hit! That was incredible! I love music videos just like as a genre, and I think there is something really beautiful about them when done well. This was something next worldly. I loved it for the true complexity of the mirrors and robotic arms, but I also loved it for the fact that we saw them running around in the background of the frame. It made it feel very human and alive and like true art that might have been lost if they were hidden. I think that if we hadn’t seen the people running around, it would have felt almost sterile, which would not have worked well for the message of Love. It was truly a work of art and an incredible demonstration of how robots can be utilized to create art. This makes me want to make a music video with a bunch of mirrors right now.
DeleteI've seen this video several times and have spent too long watching trying to wrap my brain around everything they did. The level of precision is incredible. The statement at the end though hit me, "The only ones who never mess up a take are the robots" in theatre we strive to replicate the same thing over and over, but art changes and humans react differently to the same thing I can't help but wonder if we implemented more robots into theatre would it feel less alive or would the work hold together with the forced precision?
ReplyDeleteI published my comment and realized that I hadn't met the 150 requirement. So here's the substantive comment below:
DeleteI've seen this video several times and have spent too long watching trying to wrap my brain around everything they did. The level of precision is incredible. The fact that they explicitly state that there were safety features programmed within the robots to keep everyone safe helped to ease my mind a little bit, but I still can't help but to think that something goes wrong and even the fastest emergency stop could be too slow. The statement at the end though hit me, "The only ones who never mess up a take are the robots" in theatre we strive to replicate the same thing over and over, but art changes and humans react differently to the same thing I can't help but wonder if we implemented more robots into theatre would it feel less alive or would the work hold together with the forced precision?
This video was absolutely fascinating to watch. The shots they achieved with those mirrors are insane. I’ve always been a sucker for all sorts of special effects and seeing one achieved in one shot through this intelligent use of these robots and mirrors was super cool. I have never really been good at math and understanding physics, but seeing this done honestly inspires me to try and understand it a little better so I can achieve effects like this in future designs I make. I think this hits really hard for me because as a kid I was always fascinated by the way that mirrors can just infinitely reflect you. I used to play around with mirrors in dressing rooms all the time because of how fun and cool I found it. Seeing it used in this way, makes me realize how I could do the same in an artistic capacity to make a really cool design for a show.
ReplyDeleteI’ve recently been pretty interested in the concept of using mirrors to affect lighting design. I thought this music video demonstrated so many different ways to use them that I hadn’t imagined. Using them around the camera at decreasing angles to create that kaleidoscopic effect was so visually pleasing and well done. Then involving the costume design to create different patterns in the mirrors was so unique and thoughtful to the video. I also really liked the colorful props they used to create different backgrounds and intense visuals. I thought the involvement of the robotic arms was a really interesting concept that worked really well. The way it could sync up with the music made for a great aspect of the music video, and used really precise angles to include band members that weren’t physically in the frame. The design was really unique and clever, and blew me away more and more as the video went on.
ReplyDeleteOK Go always does the coolest things for their music videos. I remember when I was little, I was captivated by the Rube Goldberg machine that they did for their music video This Too Shall Pass. in this video, they do have a similar situation where because it's a Rube Goldberg machine, everything has to work perfectly in one take, and they're running against the clock, they're running out of things to replace for the parts that get broken during the course of the video, but they have one more shot and then they make it. Looking at this video with that context is also really interesting, because you can tell that they've been filming it for a while, as they are covered in paint from past attempts and very dead-eyed. I also remember that they did one previously where they had like an entire marching band in camouflage in a swamp somewhere I think. It's a really interesting business strategy, and I do think it works because they're not super well known as a band as far as I'm aware, but you do regularly hear and see videos of their music videos even to this day. It's also interesting to see them adapting with the times, going from Rube Goldberg machines, to doing choreography with treadmills, to doing this with robots. I wonder if all of these videos are conceived of and created by the same team of people or if it's a different team every time, because they all have the same sort of feel to them, even with very different elements involved.
ReplyDeleteThis music video is an incredibly impressive feat of pure vision and execution. Even more impressive is that they only had two days on set to film to music video and while there was a lot of preprogramming that went into this creation, at the same time the article discusses many, many iterations that were necessary to properly sync up the robots to the music of it all. In a certain way, this feels like a short theatrical / musical performance based on its one take nature and needing perfect synchronization to achieve the effect they wanted. A question I have though is about the creator’s intention to maybe look into each robot being powered by an AI autonomous agent and if that is meant to be a part of the artistry or is it just to make this process easier? Is it to make the AI create art or just to be part of the creation of art? The former is much more interesting but also becomes interesting of the ownership of that aspect of the art. Especially if the creator lets it do as it wishes as opposed to fitting within a particular choreographed movement decided by them.
ReplyDeleteI had completely forgotten about OK Go. I remember my sister showing me their music videos when I was still in elementary school, and I was totally enthralled with them for a while. They do really amazing stuff, and this is no exception at all. I can’t imagine how much work had to go into making this whole video, especially considering that everything had to be reset after each take. Honestly, it kind of makes their old videos feel less impressive just because this is one is so awesome. It’s really dizzying sometimes when all the camera sees is mirrors on mirrors on mirrors! Even though they had all the robots, I love that they still used a human cameraperson. It makes the video feel so much more real when you see the camera shake a little during certain moments; at least for me, it reaffirms that really none of it is CGI.
ReplyDeleteArticle title had me a tad skeptical about things, I was like “it’s just a music video.” Then I watched it and it was probably the coolest MV I’ve seen in my life. I’m in sheer awe of how PERFECT all the mirror angles and blocking were, and I’m scared of how much trial and error was probably necessary to achieve that. I haven't read the article yet, just watched the video, so I’m curious about how the robots were used! I know nothing about programming or anything like that. Regardless of my inexperience, I think it’s cool that the robots had to be uniquely programmed to match up with the song’s BPM. People often try so hard to separate technology from anything art related (and I can’t say that I myself am at the forefront of the merge), but this video really proves why that traditional way of thinking is so wrong. The use of mirrors would’ve been literally impossible without the robots. It’s inspiring to think that there are things we’ll be able to do with automation in the future that are impossible now.
ReplyDeleteThis is fascinating. I watched the video first and then read the article and then the entire time I was watching the video I was sitting here thinking about whether or not it was done as one take and if so how many attempts they made at it. So then when I read the article to find out it was all one take I was even more impressed. I mean that is the interesting vibe the video had. It seemed like we were watching behind the scenes but were not at the same time which was kinda epic and I thought it was one shot for that reason. I do not think it would have blended together in the same way had they not done one take. I would love to see the real behind the scenes on this shoot, specifically what the camera operators look like or if they are robots as well.
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