Radiohead takes data viz to MTV and Creative Commons

Radiohead has upped the ante once again with the release of their new music video, House of Cards.  In making the video, no cameras or lights were used – all the images you see were made from data. That's right, data.  The 3D images that make up the music video were rendered with Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR.  Google says the creators used 64 rotating lasers, shooting in a 360 degree radius, 900 times per minute to produce all of the landscape scenes.

And if that wasn't hip enough for the band, who offered their CD, In Rainbows, to fans with a name-your-own-price approach last year; they have also made all the data available to people like you and me through a Creative Commons license. Now, if you ask me, that's cool. 

You can download and manipulate the data to create your own version of Thom Yorke's pixilated face from Google Code. When you're done, you can share your version with the band and the rest of the world on the House of Cards YouTube Group.