“It doesn’t really feel like we think of them at all. It feels like we find them” - Damian Kulash
OK Go are widely known for their crazy music videos, all different and with a twist. Recently the group appeared on my Recommended on Youtube, with a recent song called ‘Obsession’. This music video consists of exactly 567 printers positioned on top on one another, printing out thousands of designs that will sometimes collaborate together to create beautiful patterns as the background of the band’s video. As you watch this, the video is either slowed down or given a stop motion to fit the printing’s timing.
OK Go are more famously known for their music video, “Here It Goes Again”, where they stand, walk, jump along eight treadmills throughout the song. This video got over 39 million views and also how I found out about them. Their videos have become more and more crazy ever since, from riding on Honda UNI-CUB’s through a Tokyo carpark, to throwing paint balls in zero gravity, to slowing down a 4.2 second shoot.
The band posted a Ted Talk that I watched straight after this video. As a fan of their videos and music, I had to find out where they get their ideas from. Singer, Damian Kulash, is the talker in the video along with the other members holding up boards that explain visually his speaking.
Kulash speaks about the idea of finding the feeling, ‘Wonder’. He explains this feeling by telling a story where he was in a restaurant with his wife. As his wife is trying to speak to him, Kulash is “bobbing and weaving”, trying to level his eye perspective just enough that the “ficus plant is coming out of her head like a ponytail”. This, to him, is a perfect way of explaining how one finds ideas. There are so many ideas, so many possibilities and thoughts, you just need to find that perfect angle that sits them all together in a perfect harmony. In a small way, this links to design. Design needs a sense of wonder, it needs that perfect angle or spot which just joins it all together for the viewer to see it’s meaning and viewpoint. I hope to work with the idea of perspective, how 3D design can change with just one tilt or a slight rotate. Like OK Go, I hope to find that one perfect idea.
