Pieces/Together

An interactive music video for the song "Pieces/Together" by synthpop artist Maxwell Powers. As the video begins, Maxwell’s half-silver face fills the screen — which then fragments into nine separate video boxes. The viewer can then manipulate these as they bounce across the window, bumping into one another, flipping upside down and sideways with a realistic physics as the videos inside them progress. The page is created entirely in HTML5 and javascript, utilizing the open source physics engine Box2D, most known for its use in the popular game Angry Birds. Maxwell describes his interest in combing music and web technology: "I want to turn the music video into a truly ‘lean forward’ experience. It’s been 30 years since the music video emerged as an art form, and though the music video has moved from MTV to YouTube, it still looks pretty much the same. With upcoming video technologies like HTML5, we have the potential to engage the viewer to become actively involved in the experience and even creation of the video. In "Pieces/Together," every time the video plays the experience is unique.