Known for their elaborate performances almost as much as their albums, the American band OK Go just released a new music video that is very literally a hall of mirrors. Filmed in a Budapest train station, “Love” incorporates 29 robots and 60 mirrors that move in perfect synchronicity. The result is an endlessly evolving kaleidoscope that distorts reality and illusion, connecting the band and their surroundings through a trippy, impeccably timed production.

To get a closer look at the making of this iconic video, check out the behind-the-scenes video shot from the perspective of each band member.

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Director Winston Hacking (previously) and animator Philippe Tardif are back with another collaborative music video that propels us through an uncanny series of portals. For Foxwarren’s catchy “Listen2me,” the pair created a cheeky animated collage in which characters gab as we’re pushed closer to their faces. The result is a mesmerizing, surreal video that, to Foxwarren’s pleading lyrics, compels our attention.

Find more from Hacking on Vimeo.

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The disorienting effects of technology are on full display in the chaotic, action-packed music video for Corridor’s “Jump Cut.” Cut-paper collage, archival footage, and rapid, glitched movements dominate the energetic track and visualize the unending frenzy of contemporary life. The brilliant direction and design is by Winston Hacking, with Philippe Tardif on animation.

Watch the full video below, and find more from Hacking on Vimeo.

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Championing the next generation of dancers in The Netherlands, CDK Company (previously) has made a name for itself through large-scale interpretations of pop music involving numerous dancers in playful, themed outfits. For the group’s latest video, director and choreographer Sergio Reis and team took on Billie Eilish’s “Bittersuite” from her 2024 album Hit Me Hard and Soft.

Set among paintings and installations in Museum Voorlinden, three dozen performers don pastel garments evocative of 1960s fashion, all wearing identical dark, bowl cut wigs.

Whether moving through a gallery of paintings by Michaël Borremans, stationed inside a 4-meter-high Corten steel sculpture by Richard Serra, or synchronizing around the edge of Leandro Erlich’s “Swimming Pool,” CDK leads us on a vibrant, emotive journey through Eilish’s music and the museum’s art collection.

Find more on CDK’s website and dance along to more videos on Reis’s YouTube channel.

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From throwback pixelated video games to science fiction-inspired computer consoles, Love Hultén’s playful sculptures (previously) harken back to the birth of digital.

Based in Gothenburg, Sweden, the artist’s explorations of video games, electronic music, and retrofuturist aesthetics continue to shape playful pieces like “R-KAID-R,” a mobile video game complete with a toggle, all of which can be carried like a briefcase.

One recent work, “The Future Fan Stage” takes a humorous approach to a fantastical fusion of live performance, science, and computers. Commissioned for Gothenburg’s Way Out West, the screen doubles as a fully functional stage that played live recordings of the headliners “for what might be the largest yet smallest crowd in history: sperm and eggs getting ‘ready to rumble’ in a laboratory,” Hultén says.

The artist draws on controversies surrounding in vitro fertilization (IVF) that have reached a fever pitch during the past few years. Taking an optimistic approach to science and modern medicine, Hultén references studies demonstrating that music may improve fertilization during the IVF process.

Hultén’s work will be on view in Liljevalchs’ spring salon Vårsalong 2025, which opens on February 14 in Stockholm. Find more on the artist’s website.

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We’re more selective these days about how we use the word “meta,” but when it comes to OK Go’s latest release, the band has created—bear with us here—a music video using phones about videos made with phones.

Known for elaborately choreographed music videos that bring pop songs to life through playful, chromatic, even gravity-defying stunts, OK Go (previously) continues to push the boundaries of the genre. The group’s tune “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill,” which premiered last Thursday, features a mindbogglingly complex composition using 64 smartphones to record and transmit a joyful performance.

The band is currently composed of Damian Kulash, Tim Nordwind, Dan Konopka, and Andy Ross, who relish the creative potential of the music video genre. Tapping into a unique style of filmic continuity using split screens and meticulously-planned set transitions, the band defies the notion that music videos are a thing of the past.

For “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill,” each phone captured one unique take, which had to be carefully planned in advance. All 64 videos were filmed in slightly different sequences or at different angles, in some cases capturing additional phones in the band’s hands that displayed color blocks or patterns.

In a remarkable feat, the final video records the playback on the phones, arranged on a simple concrete surface, choreographed to reflect an increasingly elaborate performance. See the video on the band’s YouTube channel, where you can dance along to dozens more.

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How does jealousy snuff out creativity? A stop-motion film written and directed by Ainslie Henderson (previously) follows three furry, felted creatures struggling with each other’s success.

“Shackle” centers on the gremlin-like trio as they conjure the forest’s magic to make music. As pinecones spin like a top, dreamy sounds emerge, and slowly, the creatures add other objects to the woodland symphony. Shape-shifting sticks offer a rhythmic line, while autumn leaves provide a soothing melody.

When one envious character tries to steal the unusual instruments for himself, though, a cloud of darkness reveals that greed is incompatible with art.

The short film is a BAFTA nominee and was recognized as the Best British Film at the London International Animation Festival in 2022. Henderson has also been awarded numerous Vimeo honors for his work, which you can watch on the platform.

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Many cities around the U.S. use a microphone-powered system known as ShotSpotter to help law enforcement detect the location of gunshots. In Chicago, for example, the controversial program was implemented a little over six years ago, then turned off on September 22 when the contract expired.

A study found that the app had unintended consequences like slowing police response times to 911 calls and causing them to arrive on scene later. Meanwhile, a number of shooting deaths in Chicago neighborhoods where ShotSpotter was turned off have given rise to calls for it to be installed again.

For Riley Walz, who utilizes digital tools and apps to illuminate our tenuous relationship with technology and information, the security system inspired a different a type of data collection—what Walz calls “culture surveillance.”

Bop Spotter is a real-time collector of songs played by passersby in San Francisco’s Mission District. Installed inside a box high up on a pole, a phone runs Shazam nonstop. The music discovery app allows users to look up an artist and song title by simply recording a few seconds of sound.

Solar powered with a microphone pointing down on the street, the phone pings every few minutes, detecting music and automatically integrating the tunes into a diverse and ever-growing playlist on the Bop Spotter site. So far, more than 1,400 songs have been collected, ranging from rock to hip top to meditation sounds.

Walz shrewdly taps into the nature and prevalence of surveillance, questioning its efficacy and who notices or consents. In the case of Bop Spotter—just like its influence ShotSpotter—no one does. “But it’s not about catching criminals,” Walz says. “It’s about catching vibes.”

In addition to this project, Walz has also created apps that generate random routes for runners, tested Twitter’s blue-check verification process, and built an archive of global newspaper front pages. Explore more on his website.

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As a graphic designer and graffitist who has been making work since 1989, German artist neck, who also goes by Oliver, is a big fan of the “beauty and (sometimes) weirdness” of common audiotape design. His ambitious archive project, tapedeck, aims to document the wide range of cassettes produced throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

The cassette tape, invented in 1963, entered the market with a lukewarm reception as it competed with reel-to-reel and 8-track technologies. The suitability for recorded music along with its portability eventually put it on top of its competitors, and sound quality continued to improve in the 1970s. By the following decade, the cassette was a favorite among consumers, overtaking vinyl and continuing to dominate until the 1990s, when CDs superseded the technology.

Audiotapes, beyond their use for music and performances, were tools with which anyone could make basic recordings using a home stereo. The medium catalyzed social change thanks to its small size, durability, and copying capability. For example, underground punk and rock tapes communicated facets of Western culture among young generations behind the Iron Curtain, a political and physical boundary that divided Eastern and Western Europe between 1945 and 1991.

Celebrating the cultural legacy and aesthetic of a technology still admired by sound enthusiasts, tapedeck takes the form of a searchable visual database of nearly one thousand examples. The name derives from the deck, or machine, that tapes were played on. Searchable by playing time, color, material, and brand, the collection highlights the distinctive look of the double reels and recognizable shapes—a microcosm of graphic design from the 1970s to the 1980s.

Explore hundreds more on the tapedeck website, where you can also find information about submitting pictures of tapes not already in the archive.

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What happens when an odd but good-faith search and rescue turns terribly wrong? The music video for Nick Leng’s “beetlebugs” follows the uncanny story of an insect who asks a “Private Investigator For Creatures” for help in locating a missing loved one. Vacillating between a human and bug perspective—the latter is filtered through thousands of tiny receptors in compound eyes—an overly earnest and absurd hunt ensues, only to end in a dark, Kafka-esque twist of fate.

“beetlebugs” is directed by Brooklyn-based filmmaker Josh Sondock. Find more of his work on Vimeo.

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