Point 1:The world’s media and personal technologies are becoming increasingly interactive; we have touchscreen, gaming connecting us internationally, location based social networking, consoles using motion sensor and the list goes on. Would it be careless for me to say that our lives are essentially lived online? I think not.

Point 2 is regarding the uncomprehendable influence that music has over us, it can bring us together, divide us, cause controversy and evoke our emotions. As the popularity of music, and consequently the artist, is being progressively measured by the amount of views the song and video has received on Youtube.com, as well as by sales of course, many musicians are finding different ways to push the boundaries of the artist and the audience. This push in the creative use of media is also a result of the damaging effects of illegal downloading, which has already been challenged by the idea of instant release mp3s; after an exclusive radio play of a song it then becomes instantly available for legal purchasing.

I wrote an article for Swide regarding this new use of interactivity in relation to a project involving Norah Jones and it’s use of in-browser editing. It is an idea that allows the audience to manipulate the actual music video and, therefore, have their creative input included for international sharing. This particulare project uses Html5 and Webgl. What are these I hear you ask?

HTML is the building block of webpages using a text language, which is then read by the internet brower creating a visual and audible webpage. HTML5 allows a user to interact and create in-browser content without the need of plugins on its (HTML5) Canvas element. Cast your mind back to 2010 when Arcade Fire released ‘The Wilderness Downtown’ as this is one of the first examples of this new media in use. The viewer is asked to enter their address into the browser and then, using the google maps search engine and HTML5, the video is created using your local streets and ultimately arriving at your address. Impressive idea eh?

Webgl (Web-based graphics library) is a software library that allows interactive 3D graphics to be generated within any compatible web browser using HTML5; Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox 4 and the current developing releases of Safari and Opera. The combination of these two web-based tools is what was used to create the “Rome” project that involves Norah Jones, which is currently available only on Google Chrome and is truly worth your time.

With this new attitude to artist/audience participation I feel that the possibilities of reinventing the way that we, the public, interact with the music world will become more closely linked and create stronger links between the artist and the fan and subsequently a positive effect on the struggle against piracy. This is very exciting stuff and something that I am going to follow as the limits of this technology are pushed and exploited in new ways. Yes, it all seems quite complicated but clear your mind and, if you have Google Chrome, click on this link and enjoy project “Rome”.

For Norah Jones Click Below. 

Text by Ben Taylor