Full Bloom: Radiohead turns song into an app

UK – Radiohead has re-invented its song Bloom as an interactive video app.

The app, PolyFauna, takes users through a series of indistinct coloured landscapes. ‘Your screen is a window into an evolving world,’ explains Thom Yorke on the Radiohead website. Moving the screen shifts the perspective. Swiping a finger across the screen releases crystalline contrails in the field of vision.

The dream-like journey is set to music from the sessions for Radiohead’s 2011 album The King of Limbs. The idea for the app ‘comes from an interest in early computer life-experiments and the imagined creatures of our subconscious,’ says Yorke.

PolyFauna is a similar idea to Windy Day, the app created by Motorola and Pixar Films – even down to the red dot that users follow to move from world to world. In Windy Day users follow a bobbing red hat.

Musicians and video artists are increasingly experimenting with new technology to attract and hold the attention of viewers. For more on this movement, read our report on Transmedia Music Videos.