Advances in 3D printing did some super-cool things for music fans last year (enough for Tone Deaf readers to vote 3D printing as the Best Idea of 2013 in the annual Readers Poll).
Following on from the world’s first 3D printed vinyl records – and a pop-up store to sell them (courtesy of Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke) – now there’s another innovation in the field thanks to Aussie indie-electro favourites, Cut Copy.
The band’s newest music video for ‘We Are Explorers’, the latest single lifted from last year’s Free Your Mind, uses 3D printing to create its miniatures stars: as pair of luminescent figures that embark on their own little scavenger hunt in the streets of Los Angeles.
Cut Copy are also encouraging their fans to recreate the clip, by releasing the music, accompanying footage, and all the 3D printing files in an exclusive BitTorrent bundle.
Party, a Tokyo/New York-based creative company, are the team behind the unique clip, with co-director Aramique Krauthamer explaining that “the idea started with ‘what if we 3D printed a music video?’,” as Fast To Create reports.
Drawing on their experience with stop-motion animation, Karuthamer and his partner Masa Kawamura, “had been discussing the possibility of creating a narrative where every frame of movement was 3-D printed and shot in the street,” says Karuthamer.
“When we heard ‘We Are Explorers,’ we immediately began imagining this story of tiny 3-D printed characters running through the streets of a major city on an epic journey.”
Epic is right. With the aid of technical artist Qanta Shimizu, the project saw the creation of “roughly 200 figurines” for each sequence of the video, using running shots of groups of eight figures on a loop to create the unique visual effect.
To get the mini-explorers to glow, the figurines were printed in a special UV-reactive material so that when Director of Photography Sesse Lind shot them at night, under black light bulbs, they gave off the necessary fluoro effect. “Hopefully people print the figurines, play with them, shoot them, make new storylines we didn’t think of, take them to places we couldn’t…”
Kawamura and Karuthamer are hoping that Cut Copy fans will continue the narrative of the ‘We Are Explorers’ video by “handing everything over to the public,” allowing them to 3D print their own copies of the characters with the BitTorrent bundle, which contains the storyboards, stop-motion schematics, 3D files, music – the works.
“Hopefully people print the figurines, play with them, shoot them, make new storylines we didn’t think of, take them to places we couldn’t, and share whatever they do with everyone,” say the co-directors; “So we can enjoy the process together.”
Cut Copy are making their much anticipated return to the Australian live circuit when they play Golden Plains this March, giving local audiences their first taste of Free Your Mind in the live setting.
The electro quartet will rock a coveted post-midnight slot on the second day of the sold out festival, returning to The ‘Sup for the first time since their rain-dappled set at Meredith Music Festival 2011 (which was epic). Here’s a thought for you Cut Copy diehards: 3D print your own mini-explorers figurines and substitute them for your usual glowsticks.
Following Golden Plains, Cut Copy strike out with a number of international festival appearances, heading overseas in May for America’s Sasquatch! Festival and Barcelona’s Primavera Sound, before hitting the US again for the huge Bonnaroo 2014 lineup, joined by fellow Aussie artists Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, John Butler Trio, The Preatures, and Vance Joy.
