You will probably have seen Damian Kulash thrusting around on a running machine or spinning on a robotic chair surrounded by Japanese umbrellas. Kulash is frontman of OK Go, a pop-rock quartet whose homegrown videos have drawn more than 200 million views on YouTube, and earned them a place among America’s most playful and tech-savvy bands.
A grasp of digital innovation might seem an unusual feather in a rock singer’s cap, but Kulash doesn’t see it that way. “I’ve been saying for a while now that nerds are the new rock stars, and that goes both ways,” he says. Kulash straddled this boundary at university, where he studied computer science and music. “I remember sitting with my friend and saying ‘dude, what are we going to do? Are we going to start a startup or a band?’ And at almost the exact same moment he said ‘startup’ and I said ‘band’. He sold his startup to Microsoft, so he’s got a lot more money than I do!”
Kulash didn’t leave technology behind, however. He has been working with Sriram Kosuri, a biochemist at UCLA, on a project that is not only groundbreaking for a band, but is at the cutting edge of genetics. “I was at a conference, the Future of Storytelling, where a book had been encoded in DNA,” Kulash recalls, “and I was fascinated by lots of parts of that idea.”
After some cajoling, he convinced Kosuri that the next object to be encoded should be Hungry Ghosts, OK Go’s fourth album, released last year.
Encoding an album “on DNA” involves translating the data from binary to a ‘base 4’ code, using the four nucleotides – A, C, T and G – found within the structure of DNA. Thousands of albums could then be stored in a few drops of liquid. To hear the album, however, it would have to be taken back to a lab to be retranslated.
“It was clear that the lab wanted to work on encoding bigger data sets,” says Kulash with combined modesty and pride. “It’s arbitrary as an artistic gesture, but the scientists are actually figuring out a lot of actual cryptography and biology, so it’s win-win.”
Science projects and hi-tech videos are not the extent of OK Go’s unusual and colourful oeuvre. Andy Ross, the lead guitarist, is also a programmer who, alongside writing a smartphone game for Lindsay Lohan, has made apps to accompany the band’s releases, and built a digital version of ‘Say the Same Thing’ - a word game OK Go used to play on tour, and are now in talks to develop into a TV gameshow. The band is even planning a ‘Maker Faire-style’ combined music and technology show, to tour this summer. Kulash is often asked whether such projects eclipse their musical output, but he is staunch in the belief that muddling and marrying these various pursuits is how artists should work. “The idea that music is this very pure thing – only the recording – is a historical oddity,” he says, “and it’s breaking down pretty quickly.”
To illustrate his belief in the blurring of science and humanities, Kulash recounts the experience of seeing the interior of the Nasa vehicle assembly building, an “incredibly huge” structure that reminded him of a cathedral. “I realised the place that I was standing in wasn’t really any more scientific than it was religious. To send someone to outer space, to put a man on the moon, requires as much faith as it does science,” he says. “I’m not saying that putting out our record on DNA is equivalent to putting a man on the moon, but I think science can be moved forward by artistic gestures.”
THE MUSIC VIDEOS
A MILLION WAYS
A lo-fi video of the band dancing to their 2005 song A Million Ways was emailed to fans and promptly became one of the most downloaded videos of all time. The highly geometric, deadpan routine, performed on a patio, was choreographed by Kulash’s sister, Trish Sie.
HERE IT GOES AGAIN
The 2006 single Here it Goes Again was accompanied by one of their most memorable videos: a gauche but mesmerising dance set around a block of eight moving treadmills. Time magazine ranked it among its 30 all-time best music videos, alongside those for Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Beyonce’s Single Ladies.
I WON’T LET YOU DOWN
The enormous popularity of their early videos has allowed the band to expand in scope, most ambitiously last year when their video for I Won’t Let You Down was released. Made in conjunction with Honda and filmed on state-of-the-art drones in a huge vacant warehouse in Japan, the video features thousands of extras and was inspired by the large-scale choreography in classic Hollywood musicals.
