Kinect camera captures ghostly guitars in first music video
The clip for Echo Lake's Young Silence could well be the first music video filmed with a Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect camera. Click here to see the Kinect creation.
A Motown drumbeat strikes up, and points of light resolve into the ghostly shapes of a half-dreamt band. The clip for Echo Lake's Young Silence could well be the first music video filmed with a Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect motion controller.
Directors Dan Nixon and Dom Jones used the Kinect camera to capture the band in apparition form, recorded with custom software developed in the Cinder coding framework. Nixon says, "The depth data was then manipulated to get the whole band in one 'space' and then the fun started." Hit play to see the hypnotic Echo Lake in action.
The lush, shoegazey shimmer of the music is perfectly complemented by the ghostly, ethereal glitter of the figures sketched out by the Kinect camera, like echoes of strangers. The visuals are at once futuristic and kind of retro, like something the BBC Radiophonic Workshop might have bodged together out of vacuum tubes and bits of spaceship.
Kinect's motion-sensing camera has proved irresistible to hackers, modders and people who like thinking outside the Xbox. Here's a selection of our favourites, from 3D filming to doodling in mid-air and even teaching your Kinect to recognise things.
The Young Silence EP is out on 12-inch vinyl on 14 February, or you can listen on Spotify. For more musical mash-ups of technology and tunes, take a look at these five interactive music videos that put you in charge. And if you're still undecided about the Kinect, see how it stacks up in arm-wavey combat against the PlayStation Move and Nintendo Wii.