The Virtual Space Theory

Music videos are not always necessarily focused on the music’s performers, who sometimes use the video as an opportunity to provide a short cinematic experience in its own right. Its visual contents may be related to the lyrics, music, or atmosphere of the song, or it may present a theme that is important to the musicians, or it may even follow some totally unrelated idea. In either of these cases, the making of a music video sometimes involves the creation of new places altogether. From the point of view of The Virtual Space Theory, this results in a particular kind of virtual place: one that constitutes a self-standing invention. The following is a collection of a few prime examples, some of which might best be watched in full-screen mode.

The first example is the brand new music video for Massive Attack’s recent song Splitting the Atom. Even though this blog is not a news blog, it is still a pleasure to occasionally be able to also include fresh creations in the discussion. In this case, a highly stylized visual depiction of a city, presenting intense action in a frozen moment, in which nearly the only visual dynamics are the evolving view angles that we are provided in order to witness it:

Whereas the above example is wholly based on digital production techniques, the following example is a reminder that other techniques remain just as valid. The music video of Muse’s song Uprising creates a city with its own disaster scenario (as well as its own monsters), but this time using the technique of filming a physical scale-model:

In the next example, the music video of DB Boulevard’s Point of View creates a city using a highly imaginative play on production techniques. It is made purely with computer graphics, and yet it uses these tools to give the impression that it was filmed using a scale-model made of pieces of cardboard. Even more interesting is that the character of the city – although made to reflect contemporary urban environments –clearly also incorporates its actual cardboard nature:

Finally, the visual contents of the music video of Goldfrapp’s Twist may not be quite urban, yet it presents a fascinating journey through a whole range of inventive places at different scales, unfolding before our eyes on a continuous roller-coaster ride. Shall we go on another round?

Since pop music is largely an urban culture, it is no surprise that many music videos use an urban setting within which to present their music performers. In most cases, the urban location is presented in the context of a straightforward documentation, as if we were witnessing the music being performed right then and there. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is the award-winning music video of U2’s Where The Streets Have No Name, which is a filmed performance of that song on a Los Angeles rooftop (and a tribute to The Beatles’ live performance of Let it Be on a London rooftop nearly twenty years earlier):

In some cases, however, the urban environment seen in a music video is not quite a documentation of a physical city – it has undergone some form of transformation. Technically speaking, the filming may have still taken place in an actual city, but what we see in the music video has been visually manipulated so as to create the experience of a new place which can no longer be considered quite the same city. As the following examples demonstrate, the extent to which such urban transformations occur may vary, and so do the techniques used to achieve them.

The music video of Cornelius’s Point of View Point shows a relatively mild transformation that is achieved mostly through the editing of the video, its manipulation of the sense of time, and its synchronization with the music:

The music video of Lauryn Hill’s Everything is Everything shows a transformation that is primarily that of context: the city streets are transformed into the grooves of a spinning record. This is achieved through image manipulations and the overlaying of additional elements, but its success is in making even the unchanged images appear to belong to this transformation just as well:

Finally, the music video of Robbie Williams’s My Culture, which is the most architecturally interesting one, is primarily a transformation of content. That is, the urban elements filmed on location are playfully rearranged into a new composition, resulting in a different place altogether:

Looking at the above music videos, then, which of them should be described as presenting virtual places? From the point of view of The Virtual Space Theory, the answer is: all of them. The Virtual Space Theory considers all pictorial images as providing views into virtual space – whether their visual content is a documentation of a physical location, a transformation of one, or an original invention. In any of these cases, the result is an experience of place that is made available to us through a pictorial medium, or in other words, a virtual place. The following posts in this series, therefore, will approach the creation of such places not just as a matter of media, but also as a matter of architecture.

Film stars do not necessarily always have to be actors – they can also be places. Paris and New York, for example, are very popular film stars, having appeared in countless films. Usually the film role of such places is to just ‘act’ as themselves, though sometimes they can play a different ‘character’, such as in the example of Berlin which was mentioned in a previous post.

In some rare cases, even a single house or a building can be a film star. This is the case of the Ennis House in Los Angeles, which was designed and completed in 1924 by Frank Lloyd Wright, America’s prominent 20th-century architect. Its most famous film appearance is as Deckard’s apartment in Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982). In the film, this hilltop house assumes the role of a futuristic 97th-floor apartment:

This example demonstrates one of the design approaches taken by filmmakers for creating virtual places: redefining a physical place. In other words, a film is shot in an already existing physical place, possibly with some local modifications to suit the needs of the film. More importantly, it is then presented in a context which makes it appear like another place altogether. Technically, such as in the case of the Ennis House, the production process may also involve a stage-set version of the house, which eases design modifications as well as the placement of lighting and cameras. And yet the principle remains the same: a new virtual place in a film has been created based on an existing physical place.

The Ennis House has also starred in a long list of other films, TV commercials, and music videos, and has assumed various roles. Over the years, however, it became such an iconic film star house, that – similar to some human film stars – its real value is no longer just in its ability to act, but simply in ‘gracing the screen with its presence’. In the examples that follow, then, the house is presented unchanged, starring mostly in the role of its own self – Hollywood’s uninhabited film star house.

A series of TV commercials for Obsession by Calvin Klein, directed by David Lynch:

Music videos for Ricky Martin’s song Vuelve, and S Club 7’s song Have You Ever (and no, these videos do not represent my musical taste ):