Title: Black Mirror Artist: The Arcade Fire Director: Tracy Maurice Year Released: 2008
Who are you? Are you the sum of the college degrees you have? Or maybe you are your parents' child or your child's parent. Are you the fan of your favorite team or your favorite band? Are we the sum of the pyramid schemes that we have fallen for... or gotten others to fall for? Are you your facebook profile? Are you some strange blend of all of these things? How do we know ourselves? We look in the mirror. In their song "Black Mirror" the Arcade Fire plays on this idea of who we are and how we know? What is the mirror we are looking into? And what is that doing to us?
Shot by a security camera you can't watch your own image and also look yourself in the eye.
So what is a song? Is it the piano? The acoustic guitar? The vocals? Lead or back-up? The new video for "Black Mirror" allows you to figure this out for yourself. The video is interactive in that it allows you to mix your own version of the song, adding and removing different elements of the song with the keys on your computer's keyboard (see if you can find the special key that creates a special effect). As I toggled different pieces of the song I found myself asking "so what IS this song?" Is it just the sum of its parts... or is it something larger than that. So we return to the original question: who are you? Are you the sum of your parts... or are YOU something larger than that?
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