Saturday, March 14, 2009

Kutiman - Thru You



The following post was taken from the following location:

http://dadarobotnik.blogspot.com/2009/03/kutiman-cuttin-up-tubes.html

I'm re-posting it here because I think it:
a) is very fun to watch and listen to
b) is introduced in a way that makes us readers think more deeply about what is going on.

Take note!

"The internet's been humming today with the music mashups of Kutiman, an Israeli artist who's been using Youtube to the fullest breadth the website has to offer. It's pretty cool stuff:

He's a mashup artists along the lineage of Too Many DJ's and more recently the bombastic dancehaller Girl Talk, but the samples Kutiman uses all come specifically from Youtube and incorporate the video portion as well. This tiny distinction makes Kutiman's songs that much greater, because the humble bedrooms, basements, and streetcorners that youtubers broadcast from, complete with crappy lighting and personal sillinesses, become a cohesive song that maintains the tie to its composite parts. Like Daft Punk's Around The World we get a visual for every sound, but in this case the visual was born with the sample. So we get a backstory to every note, scratch, and vocal, an insight into how it was manipulated for the final song. In his amazingly simple way, Kutiman taps into the layering and wealth of information on Youtube and repurposes it into an anthemic readers digest of DIY creativity.

This is what I love about Youtube: It is a constant stream of lo-grade creativity, which cumulatively adds up to something exciting and fresh about the 21st century. Anyone with a cameraphone and a personality (or lack thereof) can be a player. And though Kutiman purposed this creative energy towards music, the possibilities are pretty much limitless. Imagine a screenplay written out of youtube confessional 1-liners with some kind of connecting theme, or a choose-your-own-adventure style argument that links contrasting views of different videos in a continuous point-counterpoint.

The infinite beauty on the net is sometimes buried under ceaseless comments and driveling myspace profiles, but jesus it's a powerful source. Omniscience via the terminal makes us quiet individual gods. Let us create."

1 comment:

clubbrb said...

I can't imagine the amount of time that must have gone into this. Or at least I think it must have taken a lot...to find all those clips which musically fit together? I wonder just how easy it is to do this sort of thing.