Innovative music video made with a Kinect and modified digital cinema camera

San Francisco-based ambient music artist Tycho released a music video for the song "See" from the 2014 album "Awake” that makes clever use of a Microsoft Kinect and a modified RED Epic camera.

I should admit, right away, that I was immediately interested in this news not just because of the innovative use of the imaging products, but also because I’m a huge fan of Tycho, aka Scott Hansen, who is also a graphic design artist who uses the moniker ISO50. Tycho, who plays with a live band, has always made use of visuals in their live show, so the idea for this video fits in line with what they do live, from a stylistic standpoint.

Hansen told The Verge that for him, the next big thing on the horizon is video, and that "it’s the closest thing to a perfect mix between music and design." After brainstorming some ideas in developing a music video using infrared technology, director Bradley Munkowitz and his team realized that the infrared emitter in the Kinect projected a starfield-like dot pattern not unlike what a 3D render of point cloud data looks like.

So with a Kinect projected onto the band as they played the song in the dark, a modified 14 MPixel RED Epic camera was used to capture the performance at speeds up to 120 fps. In order to capture the infrared light, the filter that blocks non-visible light was removed from the Epic camera, and lasers and other kaleidoscopic effects were added in to produce the music video.

The result is a striking visual display that accompanies the song that, according to Hansen, is the type of visuals he had been looking to create with his music for some time. As a fan of both Tycho and innovative uses of the Kinect (and other imaging technology); this undoubtedly gets two thumbs up from me.