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Your support makes all the difference.Pet Shop Boys. New video. In a toilet. Let me explain. The boys gave carte blanche to a new company, Future Reality (an adman, a film- maker and a computer graphics artist, and not a ponytail in sight) to create a version of the visuals for their new single, 'Liberation', that can't be shown on the Chart Show. You can only see it in a motion simulator - one of those things like a Portaloo on hydraulic stilts which leave you stumbling ashen-faced around the shopping centre.
In this instance, pounds 2 buys you four-and-a-half minutes of being thrown about to the sound of peachy, oh-so-ironic disco music. It feels as though you are flying through a Buck Rogers / Metropolis-style space-scape, in which also drift our heroes in pointy hats. Your craft penetrates the craters of tiny planets, while Tennant and Lowe float by on eagles' wings, showering golden feathers. Using a Silicon Graphics Indigo 2 Fully Loaded Extreme (computer system), stills of their faces are projected on to simulated head shapes, to creepy artificial effect. 'This is not virtual reality,' explains Future Reality's Ian Williams. 'This takes you on a predetermined flight path through an imaginary landscape - space, underwater, inside your own body . . . '
'We're working on something for the kiddies and grannies next,' says Williams. 'An interactive Alice In Wonderland where you choose to follow the rabbit or not.' This video is a novel promotional tool - attracting the fans and the curious - but isn't so different from seeing it on the widescreen down the pub after a few premium lagers. Joseph Gallivan
'Liberation' at MOMI today and Fri 15 Apr; then HMV stores in Thurrock 16, Telford 19, Gloucester 20,21, Bristol 23, & Portsmouth 22. Further tour information on 0903 700007
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