Lideo killed the Radiohead's star - July 17, 2008
Surely this is why god invented computers: The latest video from cheery popsters Radiohead is a technological orgy that will have you mesmerised. Oh, and it doesn’t involve lenses, or film.
But this isn’t a music review, it’s a science news blog, so you’ll have to form your own opinions about the music by watching for yourself. You can also read about it in one of numerous news stories.
The images were created using LIDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging), a technique where loads of lasers are bounced off things all at the same time, for the distant scenes, and a geometric scanning system to get all the up-close fine detail. Clever computers take these many data points to give the images, so reminiscent of those framed pin toys that would hold imprints of bodily parts.
Radiohead hooked up with Google, who also support a viewer that allows you to play with the data. Only after about 15 minutes of playing around with the viewer did I realise that the music was on a loop and I could have stayed there all day if I wanted. And that’s quite likely. You can move Thom Yorke’s singing head around, or zoom in and out of the street scenes that make up parts of the video.
Go on, play around. Oh, and watch the video about the making of the video (lideo?) as well
