Google supports Australian indie artist with interactive music clip

The massive Internet giant is throwing its support behind the little guy. 

Google Play in collaboration with independent Australian songstress Elizabeth Rose created an interactive music clip for her new single "Playing With Fire."

The clip, which can be accessed via a website on desktop and mobile, allows you to use your mouse or finger to move, shatter and play with Rose's clip on screen. Its simple, yet somewhat engaging, design gives a new element to the traditional clip, though it doesn't quite blow your mind.

You can swipe, click, tilt and drag to see various things happen on the screen but ultimately the interaction is limited to a few manoeuvres and results, including exploding hearts and moving triangles. You only want to spin a banner around someone's head for a few seconds. 

Rose said in an emailed statement the music clip is meant to allow viewers to battle her emotions and as far as independent clips go, this is pretty cool and unique. "We didn’t just squash the music and technology together. We melded it, so fans can interact with the meaning of the song, not just the visuals," Rose said.

Google has previously worked with Arcade Fire on an epic HTML 5 music clip in 2010, which allowed the viewer to enter the address of the home where they grew up and created a music video that featured the house. You followed the journey of a kid running along your street through custom sized pop-up windows and synchronised video playback across all the windows. 

It ended with you being able to write a letter to your former self, in a secondary interactive element. This clip six years ago showed the possible creative future of online video clips. Rose's clip by Google Play in Australia is the first step toward making innovative clips in the local market. The only other major push into such things was a Google Labs Cube experiment with The Presets.

Google Play's Sophie Hirst said although this clip appears more simplistic for users than the previous experiments, the tech underneath is actually quite involved.

In layman's terms, the video, which was created for a mobile device and not in an app environment, is made up of multiple video layers with varying transparency. This allows the music video to play on the top layer, with interactive elements and other design features in the other layers.

"The fact it is simplistic to use, I don't view as a criticism."

"It is an experiment, but we do think the end result is fun and the fans are loving it so far ... The fact it is simplistic to use, I don't view as a criticism," Hirst told Mashable Australia. "It is almost like a video game meets a music video, it is all built on a mobile website and I think the experience is very fun. That is what Elizabeth Rose wanted to do. We are really proud of what we built."

She also explained it was a 50/50 collaboration between Google and Rose from the beginning of development. The company, Hirst said, had been wanting to work with Rose for a while, due to her unique style and music. 

"We wanted to build something from the very beginning and co-create, we didn't want it to be an idea that we had formed and handed over to Elizabeth, and vice versa," Hirst said. "The core of it is combining art with technology to do something new. It is really about supporting Australian artists."

No one can argue with that. 

Fans can download Rose's new future pop album "INTRA," which features the song "Playing with Fire," by grabbing a free trial of Google Play Music. 

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