and speaking of lasers

The new Radiohead video for "House of Cards", which has been teased with various screencaps over the past couple of weeks, has finally premiered, as promised, on Google. A little background info first, from the Google Code site:

No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.

I'm not entirely sure what that means or how it works, but I do know it does make for one hell of a cool video, the ephemeral nature of the lasers creating an imprecise, fleeting picture that perfectly matches the themes of impermanence and instability in the song (which, btw, is my least favorite track off In Rainbows, but ya know, gift horses and all that).



Please note that there's an option to view in high quality on the youtube page. Also, please note that I highly recommend doing just that.