Day and Night Digital | Irish Independent

With MTV abandoning its music programming and terrestrial TV refusing to find room in its schedule for the music video format, many bands and labels will already be aware of the importance of Youtube and other sites for music videos. Some more savvy artists are turning away from the traditional music video in favour of interactive music video experiences. By substituting a good film director for a good creative director, bands are finding new ways to promote their music. Digital looks at some of the best.

• Californian indie band, Cold War Kids who released an interactive video for their new single “I’ve Seen Enough” which allows the viewer to select, mix, solo and mute each band member playing different four different versions of the song, picking and choosing from original, electronic, acoustic, and dub takes as well as the accompanying band member performance footage. The video has given the band a second buzz ahead of their forthcoming album.
• A Spanish band called Labuat has produced a linear interactive experience for their song “Soy Tu Aire” which features exploding patterns, butterflies, fish and mini-scenes along an inked thread across the screen controlled by the mouse. The ink gets thicker and more vibrant as the song’s dynamics reveal themselves. (Video here)
• Back on Youtube, the new annotations feature has allowed people to hack some elements of interactivity into the site. The video for Iggy Pop’s “King of Dogs” allows you to choose from three different dog characters to be your main character in the video with while taking the annotations feature to the max is the YouTube Mosaic Music Video which has a genetic video makeup of 1.4 million tiles and thousands of Youtube video stills and links to every video featured when a frame is clicked.
• Favouring a fully interactive experience, the absolute standout video for UK singer Julian Perretta’s “Ride By Star” has some serious out-of-the-box (and screen) interactivity. With the use of a webcam and a printout of a tracker provided, the viewer can watch the video project itself onto the tracker through the webcam using a technology called Papervision. See the awesome demo.