The Virtual Space Theory

One of the most fun aspects of writing this blog is that when I begin to research some topic I do not always know in advance where it might lead. The current series of posts on the roles of architecture in music videos is probably the most obvious example of that. As I was browsing the Internet (and my own memory) for interesting music videos to discuss and analyze, it first seemed that all I could find were random unrelated examples.

Eventually, however, some recurring patterns started to reveal themselves. One of these, as discussed in the previous post, is music videos in which the performers are presented as they walk through a city. A whole other pattern that became apparent is music videos in which the performers are presented on the open back of a vehicle as it rides through a city. This may seem like a mere semantic difference, but as the following examples will demonstrate, the sense of space that they create is quite different.

One example of this is the music video of Bjork’s song Big Time Sensuality. In this video she is seen performing on the open surface of the back of a truck, while the camera is located at the rear of the truck looking forward. As she sings and dances, the view moves along New York streets, which, due to the dynamic changes of view, serve as much more than just a background, but rather as the architectural settings for her performance:

The music video of U2’s song The Sweetest Thing provides yet another variation on this principle. Presented as a husband’s grand apologetic gesture to his wife, whose birthday he forgot, the video puts the viewer in the place of the wife for whom the song is performed. The band’s singer, Bono, is seen seated in a horse-drawn carriage, and the camera view is directed towards the back. Accordingly, as the carriage rides on, the city’s changing views (Dublin in this case) are now revealed in the opposite direction as before: Coming in from the sides and moving away behind him. This is enhanced even further by the inclusion of other band members, performers, and various props that join in as they enter into view:

A more peculiar and playful variation on the theme of a city ride is the music video of Dizzee Rascal’s song Bonkers. In this case, the back of a truck is presented as a wall-less bedroom riding through a city, while the point of view is variable. One of the most dominant points of view in this video, however, is a polar panorama showing the performer from above while distorting the view of the city. This creates the impression of a self-contained, strange world of its own, whose dynamic structural changes are determined by the streetscapes coming towards and moving away behind the truck. Additionally, as the video proceeds, the form of presentation of its urban environment evolves as well, from daytime to nighttime, and ending in a graphic abstraction of itself:

What I find interesting in the above examples is the particular sense of space that can be created when presenting a music performer on a ride through a city: A simultaneous combination of two apparent opposites. Such videos engage the viewer with a dynamically changing architectural setting, all while providing the most natural environment for music performers – a static stage. And yet, they each manage to create a different variation on this principle, resulting in a particular experience of space of their own.

Following the post on the roles of architecture in music videos, I would like to elaborate on the difference between the roles of ‘background’ and ‘setting’. Basically, what marks that difference is whether the architecture is just located behind the performing band (or other visual subject of the video) while showing little or no interaction with it, or whether the architecture gives the impression that it actually surrounds the performers and defines the space in which they are located.

In the case of static images, the role of architecture as a setting is usually achieved by a careful choice of the image’s viewpoint, or by placing the architecture not only behind the image’s subject but also along the sides and even in front of it. A clear example of this is Tintoretto’s painting The Discovery of the Body of St. Mark, which presents its theme inside of an architectural setting as well as directly interacting with it. This may be easier to achieve in the case of an interior space, but a sense of an architectural setting can of course be achieved also in exterior locations.

Dynamic mediums such as music videos, however, have the added advantage of being able to use the dimension of time in order to provide a sense of setting. That is, even if at each single moment the architecture may practically be seen only behind the performers, the continuous movement of the camera’s point of view provides the experience of an architectural setting which the performers are surrounded by.

One of the simplest ways to achieve this is probably to just have the music performer walk through an architectural environment, and the most straightforward example of this I can think of is The Verve’s music video of their song Bittersweet Symphony. Filmed along Hoxton Street in London, its location is seen mostly out of focus and is of secondary visual importance, but it still provides an unmistakable sense of setting:

A more sophisticated example is the music video of Pharcyde’s song Drop, which was directed by Spike Jonze. Here too, the viewpoint moves backwards as the performers keep walking towards it, continuously revealing the urban environment they are located in. Yet the sense of setting is enhanced even further by their multiple interactions with it, as well as the playful effects that were made possible by filming the video in reverse:

Finally, probably the most ingenious example of providing a sense of setting by having a performer walk through it is the music video of Kylie Minogue’s Come Into My World. In this video, director Michel Gondry found a particular street intersection in Paris which allowed for a continuous shot going in circles, during which the singer interacts with her environment in different ways each time around. The result is a visual equivalent of a musical canon with city streets as its architectural setting, allowing for the discovery (and duplication) of further details of it on every round:

Throughout the history of the pictorial image, architectural content has been used to perform various roles. A thorough analysis of these roles and their evolution over the ages can be found in the book, focusing on both the medium of painting and the newer medium of film. In this post I will present a short overview of the roles of architecture in pictorial mediums by centering particularly on examples of music videos.

Architecture as frame – In medieval art, which was often made to accompany a written text, an architectural frame was commonly used as a visual separation between the surface of the paper on which the text was written and the visual content of the painting, which was usually a depiction of a character. Sometimes a series of such frames were also combined to create a larger architectural setting. Remnants of this use could also be seen in the art of the Renaissance, but gradually less so in later periods, and hardly ever in moving images.

A rare example of a contemporary use of architecture as a frame is the music video of Massive Attack’s song Protection (from about 1:05 on), which can be interpreted as echoing the use of the architectural frame in medieval art. It features a series of views of people in their homes seen from outside their windows, presented in a single continuous shot moving in and out of an apartment building. The building’s windows serve as the visual frames that define each scene and the space of the character depicted in it:

Architecture as background – Any music video where a city is seen behind its band as they perform their song could be considered to be an example of architecture fulfilling the role of the visual background of a music video. Though this may sound rather straightforward, I am actually aware of only few examples of this kind and welcome further suggestions from readers. One such music video is Beirut’s song St Apollonia:

Architecture as setting – The role of architecture as a setting refers to cases where architecture is not only seen behind the performing band (or other visual subject of the music video), but is actually used as a visual means of defining the space where the band is located. Many of the music videos of the band U2 make such a use of architecture in them, such as in the example of Beautiful Day, filmed at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, which was designed by architect Paul Andreu:

Architecture as subject – In a few rare cases, architectural content serves the role of the actual subject of a music video. These are cases in which the visual content is either purely architectural, or those in which architecture is of primary visual importance even though the song’s performers are seen as well. In even rarer cases, such architectural content is created especially for the music video, as in the example of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ song Otherside. It features a highly imaginative environment made in the spirit of German expressionist films from the early 20th century. Additionally, even though the band members are also included in it, their performances as well as their musical instruments are totally defined by the virtual world they are located in – which is the true visual subject of this music video:

An inherent characteristic in the making of pictorial images is that their visual pattern can sometimes be interpreted in more ways than one. Unlike in the discussion of the previous post, however, the two interpretations I am referring to here are not the pattern on a surface vs. the space that can be seen through it, but rather two different spatial contents altogether. This is most familiar in the many optical illusions found in images that seem to have different visual contents depending on how one looks at them, such as the famous examples of ‘old woman or young woman’, and ‘rabbit or duck’. In other words, such images are ‘ambiguous’.

Normally, this ambiguity is actually a limitation of the art of image-making. As a result, a whole range of conventions and techniques have been developed over the centuries precisely in order to overcome it and produce images that would have only one consistent visual interpretation. Yet an alternative approach to the issue of ambiguity was to actually embrace this limitation and incorporate it into a part of making art. An example of this is some of the work of Salvador Dalí: his painting Raphaelesque Head Exploding simultaneously shows a human head as well as the interior of a dome.

Sometimes, also an image that presents a seemingly continuous space can still include within it parts that are made in an ambiguous way. When seen as a whole, then, the result simultaneously seems correct and incorrect, and provides a visual experience that is quite different from either the physical world or most pictorial images. This is the principle behind some of M.C. Escher’s work. In the following example, Convex and Concave, the two spaces on the left and the right are visually consistent each in itself as well as compositionally symmetrical, yet they are incompatible with each other. However, by drawing ambiguous elements along the part of the image where the two spaces connect, they appear as if they create one continuous visual space, even though such a space would be physically impossible.

Similar principles have also been applied to moving images such as TV commercials and music videos. In the following example (which is also mentioned in the book), a car commercial presents the abilities of the advertised car to handle challenging road conditions. This is done by showing it driving through an urban environment that can be visually interpreted in several ways simultaneously:

The last example combines the ambiguity of the optical illusions discussed above together with the issue of pictorial and non-pictorial images discussed in the previous post. It is a music video of the Chemical Brothers’ song Let Forever Be, which was directed by Michel Gondry:

What I find so brilliant about this video is that it expresses in a moving image the same kind of concerns that have preoccupied painters and art theorists for generations:

First, it employs rudimentary film editing techniques (such as various forms of image duplication) in a way that, at least to me, seems to echo some of the approaches of modernist painting as discussed in the previous post. That is – as seen in Pablo Picasso’s Violin – it uses multiple pictorial fragments as mere elements from which to construct a flat arrangement of paint (or pixels) on a surface.

Second, the video reinterprets the resulting image pattern as if it were itself a pictorial description of another kind of visible world, one which actually looks just like that resulting image. By repeatedly moving back and forth from one visual interpretation, to the flat pattern of the resulting image, and to another visual interpretation altogether – this video demonstrates the whole issue of the ambiguity of pictorial images in an ingenious and playful way.

From the point of view of The Virtual Space Theory, therefore, this video uses the added dimension of movement in time to suggest that an ambiguous visual pattern is simply one single window to two distinct virtual places.