interactive music video

Since music videos first gained popularity in the 80s, mainly through MTV, the art has delved into many different styles, like narrative, , animation, abstract, documentary, etc.  But it hasn’t gone through any technological or medium transformation, really.  Until I discovered Spanish band Labuat’s music video for “Soy Tu Aire“.  It attempts to embed viewer interactivity and compromise it with flash animation by allowing the user to create the continuous stroke movement in the video.  Of course, it’s only possible on a computer, perhaps suggesting that music videos really are extinct via rabbit ears (current MTV programming, anyone?).  Either way, it’s not the most visually pleasing music video, but at least its an innovative attempt.  Click here for the video and hope it doesn’t kill your bandwidth.

the guardian on saving the newspaper.

‘The Guardian’ has an excellent article about the future of print media and how it has to conform/transform to stay relevant.  Instead of becoming free, lost in cyberspace, it has to revive the newspaper itself as an experience.  This paragraph comparing it to the music industry is very insightful:

The key must be to learn the lesson of the most tightly competitive medium of all: popular music. It has cast off its enslavement to recording studios and recast itself, almost in Victorian mode, as a mass movement for live audiences. Music online is all but free. Live costs a fortune. Young people will pay more for a gig in a club than for a Led Zeppelin CD.

Then the concluding paragraph suggesting which way journalism should head:

But to be secure a media operation must entice an audience to enjoy what the web cannot supplant, a paid-for exclusivity and an opportunity for a unique participative experience. Like other purveyors of culture, such as musicians, actors, writers and even church people, newspapers will have to generate new markets for their wares. Goodbye Guardian, welcome the Guardian Experience.

Full article here

Wondering when ‘the experience’ of the newspaper will have produce the equivalent of this Coachella meme…(NSFW)