From...

December 22, 1999
Web posted at: 9:36 a.m. EST (1436 GMT)

by Paul Heltzel

(IDG) -- Is MTV moving too slowly for you? You can unleash the director in you and create your own MP3 music videos with Lava.com, a new Web site funded by Creative.com.

To record and distribute your own music videos, you download and install the Lava MusicVideo Player 2.0, which takes about 5.8MB of hard disk space. Installation is simple and snappy, and after restarting Windows you're ready to direct the action.

Lava.com calls its interface postmodern. To refer to it even as nonstandard would be a major understatement. Let's just say there are almost no right angles.

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True to its name, Lava's look is similar to that of a lava lamp, except that you can decide what moves around inside the Player window. You can choose the scene; options include an underwater voyage and a cityscape. Lava, of course, also offers psychedelic scenes. Tripletrance is a brightly colored display made of shapes I've never seen before. In Hydra, one such shape moves, apparently, underwater (or under something like water).

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You can set the Player to follow along with the MP3 of your choice. Visuals pulse and move around the screen to the beat. And you can manipulate 3D scenes by adding or removing detail, or clicking an object and moving your mouse to change perspective.

Lava wants to entice musicians who want to enhance their music, so the company lets anyone distribute its files over the Net.

As art, it's certainly an interesting experience, reminiscent of heady college dorm days. As a practical application, it's a bit on the sluggish side. It's not really buggy, but a bit of a resource hog. Lava is an interesting distraction for the MP3 set, but its goofy charm probably won't put VJs out on the street.