Collaborative Robotic Arms and Mirrors Bring OK Go's Inspiring Music Video 'Love' to Life

The inventive band OK Go has always created unique music videos that merge imagination with current technology, and they have done it again with the spectacular music video for the song “Love”.

Filmed in conjunction with Project Management Institute, the single-shot video was filmed in a Budapest train station and combines synchronizing 25 robotic arms from Universal Robots with mirrors to express the song’s inspiring message.

Inside the cavernous Budapest train station, over 60 people from 10 countries were scrambling to bring to life a single-shot music video unlike anything the band had done before. At its heart was a concept built on mirrors and infinite reflections. “The main idea behind the video was to use mirrors to create different visual effects. The concept revolved around multiplying reflections as a metaphor for love.

While it all came together beautifully, working with mirrors is more complicated than it seems, so robots were brought in to help, as explained by the video’s co-director Miguel Espada.

To achieve an infinite reflection, a reflection of a reflection of a reflection, it’s enough to place one mirror in front of another. But if those two mirrors aren’t perfectly parallel, the reflections curve and ruin the illusion…Achieving that level of precision with traditional analog methods wasn’t viable. We also wanted the effects to be dynamic. The mirrors needed to move and change shape. Robots were clearly the best choice.

This is the band’s second music video from And the Adjacent Possible, their first album in ten years

t’s undeniable: Today’s a very big one. Two things are out RIGHT NOW: 1. And the Adjacent Possible—the first new OK Go album in a full TEN YEARS. (Whoa.) 2. Love—the second new OK Go music video in just THREE MONTHS. (Also whoa—but to the opposite end. We’re keeping busy these days.)