What do you get when you mash together a tremendously creative band, suspension ropes, 567 printers, and a lot of paper? Ok Go’s latest music video for their song, “Obsession.”
Back in 2009, Ok Go released a music video for their most popular song, “Here It Goes Again,” which consisted of a hilarious and strangely aesthetically pleasing choreography of band members dancing around on treadmills. Since then they’ve established themselves as the harbingers of extremely well-thought-out and inventive videos that teeter on the edge of absurdity.
“Obsession” is the latest addition to this trend. This time, the band has stacked hundreds of printers on top of each other in two walls that form a corner, spitting out waves of paper in different designs, colors, and configurations. At first, it starts off simple, with blank white sheets coming out in manageable patterns, in real time. Though the disclaimer at the beginning of the video claims that everything is real, the identical sheets spewing out of the printer wall behind lead man Damian Kulash in the beginning look a lot like CGI. When the rest of the band comes in and the music starts, the video transitions into a stop motion effect, which makes for a very cool visual effect.
Still, the rest of the video consistently impresses and amazes with its design and execution. The paper coming out of the printers serves as its own computer screen, portraying animations, patterns, and even a three-dimensional illusion. The band interacts with the images, pretending to throw blocks at each other and around the screen.
Perhaps the coolest moment of the video is about halfway through, when the orientation of the camera flips and the band members are hoisted up on suspension ropes. As one would expect, this feature allows for more versatility. The band is now able to fly around and flip upside down, the printers spewing out increasingly artistic patterns and designs all the while.
The description to the video claims, “This video has a lot of colors. Your viewing experience will look significantly better if you manually set your YouTube resolution settings to 1440p or 4k. Otherwise, there’s actually just too much information flying by for YouTube’s normal HD compression. We broke the matrix.” Interestingly enough, there’s almost too much information flying by for our brain’s normal compression, too. The fact remains that watching this music video is a pleasure.
Featured Image by Paracadute Records
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