Martin De Thuruh

Auteur Martin De Theruh challenges many conventions of typical music videos. He tends to focus on the music coming out of Scandinavia, including quite a mainstream ambient house group; Royksopp. This group focuses on the more ambient, subtle synth style of dance music, dubbed as the mainstream “Chill-out”. In the video for ‘What else is there”, De Theruh uses a lot of very ‘Noir’ styles when directing, such as dark omniscient lighting and places a heavy emphasis on shadows. The video at first glance may seem extremely cryptic and enigmatic, but after closely listening to the lyrics and ‘interpreting’ the video, a clear metaphor is evident. Also the evident emphasis placed on roads, darkness, explosions and feet throughout the video may be referring to a car accident, anchored with the lyrics; “it was me on that road, But you couldn’t see me, Too many lights on”, and finally “Flashlights and explosions”. After applying this interpretation to the piece itself, the viewer may understand a bit more what is happening. But this is just one interpretation of his work; there could be multiple other meanings; which I believe makes this, a piece of art.
The technical aspects of Auteur music videos have more or less no boundaries what so ever, this is what makes them unique. From looking at another one of De Theruh’s videos: Special by Mew. This extremely sexually implicative video has many of the techniques evident I the Royksopp video. The use of Meat shots of the artist reinforces the bands identity, a common feat in many music videos of today. Even though this video may be placed outside the mainstream it has a paradox at heart; it does have some typical indie boy band elements within it such as dancing with a girl, band shots, but in my opinion it is an extremely emotion evoking video/song combination, therefore making it art.