The Rumpus Room creates Pet Shop Boys promo

Pet Shop Boys are set to release their first interactive pop promo, created by Tomato director Tom Roope’s latest venture The Rumpus Room.

The digital and film consultancy has drawn on PSB long-term design collaborator Mark Farrow, as well as comedian and political campaigner Mark Thomas, for help in creating the video and surrounding campaign against the erosion of civil liberties and the issue of identity cards. Integral, which will be released by record label Parlophone this week, uses quick response codes, or twodimensional barcodes, to take viewers directly to linked articles and forums on their mobile handsets.

The use of the ‘convenienceorientated’ application that bypasses the task of entering data to link to another Web page is already widespread in Japan, according to Roope. He is optimistic that its use in the UK will become prevalent as free Web browsing becomes the norm.

‘It’s early days here. Integral could be just seen as a gimmicky pop video, but what’s interesting is that decoding technology has got so good that we can embed complex data in lo-fi media. Also, the video has had to stand alone as a piece of high-level production, something that works beyond the gimmick,’ says Roope.

‘The piece is set out to tap into two trends – the first is our increasing ability to consume linear content in a non-linear way, and the second is the increase in the speed of technology for decoding information. We set out to create an initial video that takes its look from the language of the bar codes – black, white and low resolution,’ he adds. To view the video, go to www.petshopboys.co.uk.

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