We’ve all come to know that Mr. West (or should we say “Martin Louis King Jr.”) has chosen to be anything but predictable.  After dropping a completely auto-tuned album with zero rap, Kanye releases the music video for the title track of his album, directed by NABIL.  When you watch the video, resist the urge to close your browser and reopen it.  What you’re witnessing are the effects of “data moshing,” a technique utilizing the grid-like explosions of color you’re familiar with when your video player is having errors if a codec is mismatched or a file format isn’t compatible.  NABIL isn’t the first to use data moshing in a music video, but his execution and Ghost Town Media’s post effects in “Welcome to Heartbreak” are excellent.

If you watch closely, the data moshing is not random; each burst of color, flash of imagery, and pixelated shift is planned and purposeful.  The song itself (actually most of the songs on “808’s”) is startlingly honest and vulnerable, which is strange given Yeezy’s typical king of the hill behavior.  Whether you respect the project musically or not, the album leaves you slightly confused, searching and wondering which side is (or if both sides are) the real Kanye West.  NABIL and Ghost Town Media capture this sense brilliantly, sharing that they use the data moshing technique to make Kanye a “white rabbit” as the video becomes a guessing game of where he’ll appear next.  All in all a very interesting video for an artist who obviously intends to pave the way wherever he sets foot, be it music, music videos, fashion, or living like Warhol: much larger than life.  View it here.

via Caleb, 27 February 2009 6:00am | 3 |