Ok, make viral videos at the age of the algorithm

On a spring afternoon in 2005, the members of OK wore in sticky suits who gathered in front of a video camera and danced in history.

The band's Diy-Single-Shot clip for their song “A Million Ways”, in which the brainy rock quartet is moving to one of the first viral viruses of music through three and a half minutes of complicated choreography on the terrace behind the singer Damian Kulashs Los Angeles.

Ok Go Go Go Go the Lady 2006 with his video for “Here IT Gouting Nut”, another bare bones production, in which the musicians danced on eight synchronized treadmills, and then increasingly complex clips with a Rabe Goldberg machine, a plane flight with zero gravity and a pack of delightful dogs.

“As soon as the treadmill thing happened, it was like: Holy S – We are now the pop culture,” said Kulash recently “Hero It Goes Cut”, who won a Grammy Award for the best music video and was viewed more than 67 million times on YouTube.

Twenty years after “one million ways”, the mechanics of the cultural connection has changed again from the invisible hand of the data analysis thanks to social media and Tikok, where they meet when scrolling.

Said Ok Go Bassist Tim Nordwind with grinning understatement: “The algorithm has become a bit more powerful.”

“Not a big fan of the algorithm as the referee of art,” added Kulash. “It is sad to see an optimization in a room that was once the Wild West.”

But Ok Go is still there: Last month, the group released its latest one-shot video for the song “Love”, for which Kulash and its co-directorates have installed dozens of mirrors on mighty robot arms in an old station in Budapest to create a kind of kaleidoscopic obstacle course.

The band's methods have become more demanding since “A Million Ways”, and nowadays they are looking for company sponsors to bring Kulash's visions to life. But an adventurous – and touchingly personal – spirit remains the key to his work.

“What I love about the” love video “are the people in the room,” said Kulash, when he and Nordwind were sitting in front of a Burbank rehearsal studio in which OK GO was preparing for a tour to stop on Friday and Saturday in La's Bellwether. (The other members of the group are guitarist Andy Ross and drummer Dan Konopka.) “The robots are only there,” added the singer: “To move the mirrors so that we can experience this magical thing – so simple and beautiful – of two mirrors, make infinity.”

A wistful psychological-pop jam, which was inspired by Kulash, becomes a father for twin-sex wife, author and filmmaker Kristin Gore, is a daughter of the former Vice President Al Gore- “Love” from OK Go's new album, “and the neighboring possible possible LP”. With written by Shudder to Thinks Craig and a ballad of a Woozy existentialist about the discovery that there is no “no Deus ex Machina in the wings”. (The last one means “so it ends.”)

“We are old people who hear sad ballads,” said Kulash, who will be 50 in October. “That happens when you become an old person, right?”

Wedren, who knows Kulash since his Kulash, was a teen shower to think that fan was in her common hometown Washington, DC, fan said: “Part of the beauty of ok is that they are so musically all -eating – that all these things that do not seem to go together always sound like ok.” According to Wedren, the band “is not enough recognition for how exploratory they are as a musician – perhaps because of the genius of the video.”

If this is the case, Kulash doesn't seem to come to mind. Almost two decades ago, he knew that the viral success of the treadmill video das at the MTV Video Music Awards 2006 between appearances by Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé on stage to do OK GO. “Or it could be the opportunity to do more and strange things.”

Among the strange things that the group finally did: the clip 2014 for “I will not become you”, in which the members in a parking lot in Japan drive around on a drone on personal mobility devices under the eye of a camera.

“I remember that Radiohead did not play” Creep “for 10 or 15 years because they were too cool for it,” he said. “If we did the way to be too cool for treadles and homemade videos, I can look back and say -“

“We would have had a much quieter career,” said Nordwind.

There is a way to look at OK GOS emphasis on graphics that the band represent as a harbinger of an era if “musicians” is only another word for “content creator”.

“It is strange to think about a life in the vertical in contrast to horizontal,” said Nordwind with a laugh and referred to the respective orientations of videos on Tiktok and YouTube.

“What is difficult on social media is the question of volume – the volume and quality bars are off for me,” said Kulash.

It is expected that creators can bring out content like small one-person factories.

“Day by day,” said Nordwind. “We are happy to take our time.”

“Also: If I fall in love with a song, I want to hear this song over and over again,” said Kulash. “I will hear 'Purple Rain' until I die. People go back and search someone feed to reproduce the TikTok that you fell in love for the first time?

“The relationship that in my opinion people have to their favorite -Youtube star or TikToker,” he added, “feels a lot like a relationship to celebrity than a relationship with art.”

For Kulash, who gave his feature debut as a director (next to his wife) with “The Beanie Bubble” 2023, the pursuit of art is tied up in ideas of effort and restriction, which is why Ki is not interested in him as a filmmach tool.

“If everything is possible, nothing is something special,” he said. “The reason why we turn our videos in a single recording is not only for the heroic deeds of filmmaking. This is the only way to prove people: this is real – we did it.”

Ok GOS GOS GOS for expensive and time-consuming practical effects has led to partnerships with a number of deeply intelligent brands, starting with State Farm, which spent $ 150,000 for the financing of the volume of the volume in 2010 with the Rube Goldberg machine. (Meta sponsored the video “Love” and in return got an outstanding place in the clip for its Ray-Ban smart glasses.)

Kulash said that this type of product placement was “scary like S” in the late 2000s – as the fear of being perceived as a sale, every rock band hit.

“Now of course it's like an honorary badge,” he added, among the influencers who wanted to show their corporate relationships.

In order to explain his position in this matter, the singer, whose band went away from her deal with Capitol Records in 2010, tried to use his own label, Paracadute, an extended metaphor: “On the other side of the planet, tectonic plates moves and moves and the hot magma of the company comes out of the ground. It is all the last piece.

“There is no record label in the world that would ever say: 'Hey, why don't you go to Budapest for three weeks and spend a ridiculous amount of money to make this music video at a time when there is no longer any music channel?'

“But brands know that it is worth it and we know that it is worth it,” he said. “You just have to make sure that you are not burned by the magma.”