Jay Kay in Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity (1996), directed by Jonathan Glazer. Source: 1.4.
A sofa should really stay where you've put it. In Jamiroquai's Virtual Insanity, this basic agreement has broken down.
Jay Kay dances through a pale room while the furniture appears to slide around him. The camera gives us such a steady view of the walls that we accept them as reliable. Something is obviously moving. We simply blame the floor.
The production's solution was to move the room and its camera together over a stationary floor. Once you know, you can try to watch it correctly. Good luck. The illusion has very little interest in your new information.
This is the part I like. The explanation gives me another thing to enjoy: a performer finding his rhythm inside a physical contraption, with people beyond the frame helping the whole unlikely business work. What looked impossibly smooth becomes an act of coordination. Knowing about the effort doesn't make Jay Kay less impressive.
The question changes slightly in my head, too. At first it's “How is that happening?” Then it's “How did they get everyone to do that together?”
I'm trying to keep that curiosity separate from another question that comes up around AI. Sometimes we ask whether something was generated because we need to know whether an event actually happened. Sometimes we're curious about the labour, skill or invention involved. Those are different interests, and a convincing surface can't answer either of them on its own.
A music video has plenty of room to play. Nobody needs the sofa to give evidence in court. We have agreed to enjoy an illusion. With a family photograph, a news image or a picture of someone's work, we may be making quite different assumptions about what we're being shown.
Virtual Insanity makes that habit unusually easy to see. We choose a stable part of the picture, build an explanation around it and feel fairly pleased with ourselves. Then someone mentions the wheels.
There is also something wonderfully unshowy about the room. Pale walls, a grey floor, a little dark furniture. It leaves space for a body, a rhythm and one very good idea to hold our attention. The hat does its share, admittedly.
A note to keep beside this one: knowing the trick needn't finish the experience. There is still the rhythm, the performance, and a room with deeply unreliable furniture.
