Radiohead's "House of Cards" Laser Premiere

Leave it to the pioneering British band Radiohead to make a video without a camera or lights. Witness the data+laser magic of "House of Cards" on our home page today or right here:

So how did they do it? With the help of 3D image capturing created by two technology companies: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Their scanning systems produce structured light to capture up-close 3D images, while another system uses multiple lasers to capture large, landscape-type environments. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes. Here's a video that may give you a better idea of all the machinery involved:

You can also find this data-centric bit of creativity on Google's code website, which contains additional pieces of data available for incorporation into your own visualizations. Upload such videos to Radiohead's YouTube group if you'd like to share them with the band and the YouTube community. Thanks to a Creative Commons license, all the data used to produce this music video is being made available to share with you.

Now, join in -- go forth and manipulate data!


Geeking out,
Michele K-Tel