Mike Amin: Director and Collector of Digital Art

So I was watching the music television offering that Time Warner seems to think qualifies as "quality programming" (I'll save that rant for another post), and I noticed Linkin Park's latest video used some awfully familiar special effects. Below is the result of the ensuing research but it got me thinking about another "borrowed" effect controversy that came up a little while back with Kanye West. Here are the two cases in question:

Linkin Park vs. Radiohead

Below is the link to the awesome Radiohead video for House of Cards, shot without a camera:

http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/

What killed me is the Linkin Park "version" of the effect used for New Divide was employed freely throughout the video - of course giving no credit to Google or Radiohead:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuPICf8oriI

The really irritating thing about the Linkin Park video is not only did they rip off the effect, but the director made this video for 0.01% of the population because he's so damn egocentric. And I found out later that the director is the LEAD SINGER OF THE BAND. What a surprise. The video was designed for a crazy high-resolution digital Imax screen, something no mere mortal will be able to have in-home until like the year 2078. People with 55" HDTVs will be squinting to see the effects and those without HDTVs? Basically Linkin Park is saying go F yourselves to these people (whereas they are merely giving the finger to HDTV users). Great job guys - of course I'd expect nothing less from them.

Kanye West vs. Chairlift vs. Takeshi Murata

Here's the story... and make SURE to watch these in HD. And yes, they are supposed to look like that.

Kanye released this ultra high-budget video for Welcome to Heartbreak:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYR2Z1MDyiI

The above video was posted on Kanye's site after he apparently found out there was another music video floating around that looked just like it. People started posting that Kanye had ripped off Chairlift's video for Evident Utensil:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LG39Wp7OzQ

Kanye issued a statement saying that he had no idea the Chairlift vid was out there. Right. Either way I think the Chairlift vid is WAY better. So anyway, after I did some research it turns out BOTH of these folks ripped of a digital video artist named Takeshi Murata:

http://ratio3.org/artist.php?p=tmurata

This dude has been doing this stuff since 2006...

As a side note, I just checked the Wiki page for the Kanye song and they make no mention of the Murata thing. So I just went in to edit it and let people know what happened.

Update: my Wiki change has since been removed because it looks like the Wiki community feels this is not provable. Anyway check the links out above and judge for yourself...