The Virtual Space Theory

Along with the last few posts, this post continues the exploration of music videos from the point of view of the design of the places that are seen in them. In this particular post, I will discuss music videos whose design approaches take their inspiration from video games. Over the past decades, video games have developed a particular visual language and set of standards that indeed work well within their own context. Yet the use of such visual standards in a different medium or for a different purpose – such as in music videos – provides another perspective on both mediums and as well leads to interesting results in themselves.

The first example is of a music video whose visual theme is indeed centered on video games, as it lightheartedly explores the evolution of their visual language. The Lost Levels’ music video of their song The Early Sheets follows the adventures of a video game character in three parts, each representing a different graphical level of video game creation in recent decades: pixel graphics, vector graphics, and photorealism. It features architectural elements as game props (especially in the first part) and enhances its sense of space by using 3-dimensional camera angles and movements throughout the video (even when the visual contents are only 2-dimensional):

The second example uses the visual language of video games as a means of expressing places and situations from the physical world in a free form. The music video of the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s song Californication presents various geographical areas in California as if they were video game levels that need to be completed, and each of the four band members is presented as a character that one can choose to play the game with. The goal of the game is to lead each character through his separate adventure towards the meeting point of all four of them on the final level. The music video then alternately follows each of these game sequences as the band members find their separate ways to the end goal of the game:

In contrast to the above example, the music video of Superpowerless’s song Wasted My Time presents an opposite kind of relationship between video games and the physical world. Instead of showing a video game that is modeled on a physical place, it rather makes a regular physical place look and function as if it were a series of video games. It presents a simple contemporary environment using the visual language of video games, thus also emphasizing their absurdity and limited relevance to actual life in the physical world:

Finally, the music video of Röyksopp’s song Happy Up Here brings out video game elements into an otherwise unaltered common physical environment. Opening with fragmented views of a city at night with its light-bulb signs, it proceeds to suggest (starting at 0:50) that the signs turn into spaceships that seem to be taken straight out of the video arcade game ‘Space Invaders’. In this case, the photorealistic visual language is the same as that of a documentation of events in an urban environment, yet in its own playful way it somehow suggests that the city also includes objects that clearly do not belong to it, but rather to the world of video games:

The above examples show music videos that are influenced by video games in various ways, yet they all also demonstrate an interesting approach to designing places for pictorial mediums in general. Different mediums often end up each developing their own unique elements, style, and visual language that tend to become typical of them. Sometimes, however, such established standards are borrowed from one pictorial medium and applied to another – or in this case, from video games to music videos. When successful, this can be a refreshing creative approach as regards both the resulting work and the virtual place that is presented through it.

One of the most enjoyable 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 virtual places of music videos is probably the most obvious example of that. While keeping the principles of The Virtual Space Theory in mind, on one hand, and searching for architectural content in music videos on the other, I looked for cases where one could be used to demonstrate the other. Yet 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 all their own – or in terms of The Virtual Space Theory: a distinct virtual place in virtual space.

Following the post on the roles of architecture in music videos from the point of view of The Virtual Space Theory, 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:

Presenting the above examples within a discussion about virtual space or architecture might seem unusual at first. After all, weren’t these music videos made simply by filming performers walking along a city street? Yet this is precisely the point of The Virtual Space Theory: It proposes that any pictorial image, even the simplest documentation, results in the creation of a new and separate place in virtual space. As such, the particular way by which an image is made therefore functions also as an architectural act – determining the nature of the place that will be seen through the image, regardless of its original filming location.

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. According to The Virtual Space Theory, the main roles of architecture in pictorial mediums are those of frame, background, setting, and subject; and the creation of architectural content to fulfill these roles is considered to indeed be an architectural matter. In this post I will present a short overview of these roles 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:

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.