Paris – Once you view the online music video for Pandora’s Box, the latest song from French group Isaac Delusion, you might never be able to see it again.
When you visit the song’s microsite, you can click on a cube to open Pandora’s Box, so to speak, and launch the video. What follows is a series of archival film footage from Prelinger Archives, a collection of more than 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial and amateur films. The video clips are timed to be perfectly in sync with notes and flourishes of the music. A heavy bass beat, for instance, might accompany an image of a fist hitting a table at the same time.
When the video is over, viewers are told that they must share it or it will disappear. If they do not share it and try to watch it again, it will generate an entirely new montage of film. The project, created by Studio Clée, has 600 videos for 1,500 time slots, meaning there are seemingly endless permutations.
In Transmedia Music Videos, we saw how musicians are revitalising the medium, creating videos that make viewers want to play on repeat. Pandora’s Box is less interactive, but does arouse viewers’ curiosity to see what else will come out of the generator.