Music Video Transformed

Abstract

AbstractThis article appears in the Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics edited by John Richardson, Claudia Gorbman, and Carol Vernallis. This chapter asks what music video has become today and how its audiovisual aesthetics have changed online. It suggests that music videos generally through process of remediation content more actively than any other media form, performing the dual function of “visualizing music” (by recasting a song visually) and “musicalizing vision” (by structuring images according to musical logic). The discussion identifies and provides an overview of several new music video types that have come into existence online, placing them in five categories. In particular, the chapter focuses on interactive music videos and music video apps through close analyses of both Arcade Fire’s interactive video “We Used to Wait” and Björk’s interactive “app album” Biophilia. Both of these actively challenge what we have come to expect of music videos while still performing some familiar functions, prompting us to consider whether they are even music videos.