Creation and erasure: music video as a signaletic form of practice

This article addresses the affective potentials of music video, identifying music video as a “signaletic form of practice.” Following Steven Shaviro's notion of (post-) cinematic affect, the article demonstrates how cinematic affect is most clearly revealed when the images are released from traditional filmic vision—as shown in an analysis of the music video for OK Go's “WTF?” The article thereby also points towards the central role played by audiovisual modulation in conveying affect in music videos. It is shown how the site of such modulation is frequently that of the human body and how that, in some music videos, the human body is treated as an electronically or digitally coded signal rather than as a visual transcription or representation. As such, music video situates itself as an integral part of a new audiovisual regime of signaletic affect.