The Virtual Space Theory

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:

If you know of additional examples of urban transformations that were not mentioned here (or other interesting music videos)… you are welcome to make suggestions!