For the next two months, an old warehouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard will be the site of a Radiohead fever dream.<\/p>\n
The British band\u2019s newest venture is \u201cMotion Picture House<\/a>,\u201d an installation comprising an animated film, sculptures and paintings that are accompanied by unreleased material from the recording sessions for its genre-breaking electronic albums \u201cKid A\u201d and \u201cAmnesiac.\u201d<\/p>\n Videos of the exhibit first started popping up on Instagram feeds last month when a version of it opened at the Coachella music festival. People posted reels of smoke-filled rooms populated by giant black stick figures as early 2000s Radiohead tracks pulsed underneath.<\/p>\n The band then announced that \u201cMotion Picture House\u201d would be next coming to Brooklyn in May. The installation fills the entirety of the 35,000 square-foot Agger Fish Building. Your ticket gets you a two-hour time slot to explore the exhibit, though the experience centers on the 75-minute film.<\/p>\n The opening night crowd in Brooklyn earlier this week consisted of archetypal Radiohead fans: introverts, divorced dads and dudes on shrooms. But there were some new faces as well: Gen Z-ers with their phones out, people born when the band was in its creative prime.<\/p>\n Radiohead\u2019s \u201cKid A,\u201d released in 2000, and \u201cAmnesiac,\u201d from 2001, marked a significant musical departure for the group. They put down the guitars that launched them into arena-rock fame and picked up synthesizers, drum kits, and vocal compressors.<\/p>\n My fellow attendees and I filed into the warehouse, walking through aisles of staticky old TV\u2019s playing various animations and samples from the two albums. Decals of the band\u2019s session notes and doodles were plastered to the walls.<\/p>\n In the center of the warehouse was a temple-like theater space. Four giant screens acted as walls and the floor was soft rubber matting like at a gym. You have about 30 minutes to explore the TVs, sculptures and paintings before the movie starts.<\/p>\n I settled against the wall under one of the screens right before showtime. The film opens with a little horned monster \u2014 our protagonist and guide \u2014 walking through a forest of black-and-white trees before entering some kind of bunker.<\/p>\n The screen fills with color, the thundering synth of \u201cEverything in Its Right Place<\/a>\u201d kicks in \u2014 and we\u2019re off.<\/p>\n The film is surreal, disorienting and moving. The crowd was rapt. Phones remained mostly off. The young woman next to me audibly wept.<\/p>\n In promotional materials the band says it wants the installation to feel like an \u201cepic wander\u201d through a \u201cgorgeous, visceral and slightly anxiety-inducing\u201d audio-visual experience. When the movie ended the audience applauded and filed out. I overheard a few rave reviews, like \u201csick,\u201d and \u201ccoolest thing I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n Radiohead is known for innovation in the music industry. In 2007, outside of the major label system, the band released the album \u201cIn Rainbows\u201d as a \u201cpay-what-you-want\u201d download. Many paid nothing (I paid $1).<\/p>\n In contrast, a ticket to \u201cMotion Picture House\u201d costs $73. College students, at least, get a discount on Wednesdays.<\/p>\n There are powerful moments in \u201cMotion Picture House.\u201d But in some ways the experience is reminiscent of the immersive Van Gogh \u201cexperiences\u201d that kept popping up across the country a few years ago. Those immersive animations of starry nights and wiggly sunflowers were so lucrative they spawned rival competing Van Gogh companies<\/a>.<\/p>\n And as with the Van Gogh experiences, after the Radiohead installation we all exited through the gift shop.<\/p>\n