First, Radiohead release an album available for free online. Now, they record a music video without cameras. They’ve totally eschewed cameras in the making of their new video for “House Of Cards” (which will be premiered on Google Video), which uses two new technologies called Geometric Informatics and Velodyne Lidar - basically lasers ‘n’ stuff.

The Geometric Informatics scanning system employs structured light to capture detailed 3D images at close proximity, and was used to render the performances of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, the female lead, and several partygoers. The Velodyne Lidar system uses multiple lasers to capture large environments in 3D, in this case 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute

Even cooler, Radiohead are inviting and encouraging user participation (as they did in making the parts for Nude available for remixers) by making the data used to create the video available on Google for fans to manipulate and mash-up to create their own videos.

Not sure if this is the first open-source music video, but definitely the first one of its kind, and an exceptionally innovative use of the medium.

[ via gizmodo ]