The Year In Lists: 2011's Best Music Videos

As another year comes to a close, it’s time to look back with a wistful gaze and reminisce about all that 2011 had to offer. It’s fair to say it’s been bountiful, with a smorgasbord of delights coming at us from galleries, computer screens, installations, and catwalks encompassing all sorts of styles across a whole range of disciplines. To honor our faves we’ll be rolling out a list a day all week.

Today is Best Music Videos, followed by Most Futuristic Fashions (Wed), Best Interactive Installations (Thurs), and Best Kinect Hacks (Fri). If you want to check out Monday’s Best Animation/Motion Graphics go here.

In addition to our curated picks, we want to hear your suggestions too, which you can do via the comments section below, or hit us up on Facebook, Twitter or email: editor@thecreatorsproject.com. We’ll take your recommendations into account and each category will call out a special “People’s Choice” winner based on the most-recommended work.

It was a ridiculously good year for the music vid, there was interactivity, stop-motion toys, kids with guns, cartoon violence, typography, generative abstractions, motion-controlled visuals, lo-fi DIY, 3D-modelled characters, light painted words and the list goes on. It seemed like any and every technique was being utilized to make sure that the music video wouldn’t die, but rather evolve and find a new home on the web. Here are our favs from a very creative and imaginative year.

Battles: “My Machines” by Daniels

Made in collaboration with The Studio, “My Machines” features a man taking a permanent tumble down an escalator, in some kind of reverse Sisyphean dilemma. Not only does it also feature Gary Numan, but it received the highest accolade in the business: those music video connoisseurs and taste makers Beavis and Butt-head gave it a watch, “huhhh huhh huh-ing” and grunting approvingly, while also ruminating on what the tumbling guy’s kids must think about having such a drunk dad at the mall.

Joy Division: “Transmission” by SoftwareDR

Using the audio from Joy Division’s “Transmission” recorded at a John Peel Live Session in 1979, SoftwareDR beautifully recreated the band’s performance using the unlikely children’s toy, Playmobil. But as unlikely as it is, the result is inspired, with the little figures mimicking the band in a lovingly accurate way, from the camera angles to Stephen Morris’ manic drumming and Ian Curtis’ awkward dancing.

Is Tropical: “The Greeks” by Megaforce

A kid comes stumbling into view holding his stomach, wounded by unseen assailants. Ah, it’s only a bunch of children play-acting with toy guns, but then they open fire and the full onslaught of the CG cartoon violence is unleashed. Blood spews forth, explosions rock the suburban neighborhood and the shootout gets even more gruesome. A drug laboratory is seen producing white powder, and just for good measure, flamethrowers and terrorists are seen slitting throats. Kids these days, huh?

Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi and Norah Jones: “Three Dreams of Black” by Aaron Koblin and Chris Milk READER’S CHOICE

This interactive in-browser experience for the song “Black” is told from the perspective of a little girl who has three dreams, each a rabbit hole of exploration. It used Google's open-source and browser-based WebGL technology—enabling the creation of ultra rich environments—and also gives the user ability to look around. Put your headphones on, turn up the volume and prepare for a journey that’s an intimate, graphically intensive, game-like trip into the virtual realm. Explore here.

Le Révélateur: "Bleu Nuit " by Sabrina Ratté

Taking her aesthetic stylings from the neon-soaked, VHS quality of the 1980s, Ratté creates dreamy lightscapes where pools of colored light drown the viewer in an otherworldly glow, exploring all the textures that light conveys, all created using analogue and digital processes and a video feedback technique that she invented. The video’s psychedelic, radiant and calming—beautiful stuff.