(http://www.bandcampsbest.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Pogo.jpg)While searching for an artist inspiration for my new digital media project, I came across a music media artist named Nick Bertke, otherwise known as “Pogo.” His artwork is something that involves recorded sound clips from various Disney films as well as other movies, and piecing them back together so the sounds create an entirely new song. Known as an electronic musician, according to the FM music.com website “his music is often labeled as house or trip hop” (lastfm.com.) Surprisingly, there are actually videos to a lot of the music that he has produced, all using the movie clips used to produce each song. From watching a video on his website, pogomix.net, one can see just how he pieces together each set of information. Using the music program Fruity Loops Studio, Pogo is able to take clips from various characters dialogues, record them, and then sequence them together so in the end, he has a whole new song. The first video that I viewed was called “Alice,” and it used video and music clips from the movie to produce the final piece that is on YouTube today. The title Alice is from the movie that each sound clip was cut from, Alice in Wonderland (1951.) When viewing the video, it’s honestly difficult to tell that the song is made up of smaller sound clips from dialogue characters have said throughout the movie; it really sounds like a pure song. By pure, I mean that the entire final piece flows together so well that you can barely point out any imperfections within the song or video.
One piece of information that I was having trouble with at first was if Bertke actually makes the video’s first, or if he creates the music first in Fruity Loops Studio, then mashes it up with the video clips. Being that this is my first step into video art, the process for making the actual video seems really difficult. Surprisingly though, with videos such as “Alice,” the viewer can see how Bertke has tried to make the characters seem as if they were dancing and actually singing to the newly formed song. The reaction of the actual characters within the song “Alice” begin to hop around and dance as the character Alice starts to sing to the flow of sound clips. If one listens closely enough, they can hear the actual new lyrics made from the splicing of chords and sound clips. For example, the verse part of “Alice” states “There is a long way to love but I’m having trouble” (Wikipedia.org) The same is similar for his other videos, such as Wishery (Disney Remix.) In this particular video Bertke used sound clips from the movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to make a new song. The video shows Snow White singing to the new lyrics and even has the dwarfs incorporated by singing a part from their “dig, dig, dig” scene.
The idea behind Bertke’s work is really inspirational to me because he’s composing completely new works of art out of something that’s essentially in a different medium. Although he is working with both film and video, Bertke is working with two types of video; he’s creating music videos instead of making a simple video with music layed over top of it. The fact that he works with two different mediums is interesting to, in the fact that he makes new music and new videos. For me his work isn’t only video art but music art as well, which requires a lot of talent to do both. The concepts that Bertke seems to be dealing with in his work involve taking different mediums and morphing them into a new medium. By taking clips of videos and putting them to songs that he’s made, he’s changing the initial idea and meaning behind the film, and morphing it into a more whimsical and fun video that’s also a song. He not only works with Disney films but also works with movie clips from classic films such as Mary Poppins, as well as YouTube clips of natives speaking, and even my favorite remix; a piece called Jaaam (The Fresh Prince Remix.) His video art has become so popular that he was contracted by Disney to create several remixes for movies that they were producing at the time, such as Toy Story 3, Up, Pirates of the Caribbean and more. Surprisingly though, he earned more points on YouTube for his remix work than Disney/Pixar actually had on their own YouTube page.
(http://www.crayonbeats.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Front-1024x1024.png)Although the contract was dropped, Bertke still creates music from remixing video sound clips, and he is continuing to influence other video artists around the world. Bertke’s own work very much relates to my own but also very much differs from it. I really like the way that he takes old cartoon clips and morphs them together because this is essentially what I’m trying to do, and I also enjoy how he put the videos to music. Though, Bertke has taken his artwork a step further by actually creating his own music to the video clips, and then essentially making a video off of that. Since I’m merely in the beginning stages of video making, I don’t think I’ll be able to advance to Bertke’s skill level but I really think that I can take advice from his collaboration of video clips to create a truly cohesive final video. Ultimately, it’s Bertke’s video skills that I’m really interested in within my own work, and morphing it with any type of music. With my own work, I want to continue incorporating the idea of having video clips match up with the beats of different songs, which is something that Bertke ultimately does.
http://www.pogomix.net
http://www.youtube.com/user/Fagottron
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAwR6w2TgxY (Alice video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4NCnH7RPZY&feature=relmfu (Jaaam (The Fresh Prince Remix video))
http://www.youtube.com/user/Fagottron#p/u/13/qs1bG6BIYlo (Wishery video)
http://www.last.fm/music/Pogo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Bertke
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/business-being-diva/2011/jan/8/kickstarting-remixed-world/
Dainumo/Dustin S. Goodwin
(http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/252/49567193.jpg)When I first started exploring the idea of mash up video’s that incorporated music and old cartoons or old media, I stumbled upon Pogo’s artwork, though through him I have also found another artist of interest; Dainumo. Dainumo is Dustin S. Goodwin’s stage name, and he is considered to be a “plunderphonics” artist, according to LastFM.com (LastFm.com.) His artwork incorporates taking samples from media clips and piecing them back together to create a new artwork. Essentially, Dainumo is taking the same ideas as the artist Pogo, though his results end up involving more movies than older cartoons such as Pogo’s work. Born in St. Louis, MO, Dainumo has taken clips from famous movies such as Iron Man 2, The Dark Knight, and Reservoir Dogs, as well as many more. There really isn’t much known about Dainumo, although his YouTube page has an email and number for booking inquiries.
Dainumo’s work, such as his remix video for the movie The Wizard of Oz, entitled, “Ruby Shoes.” This video incorporates clips taken from the movie, sound and visual, and results in a music video that sounds like pure music. One very interesting fact about this video that I find interesting is that the video is much more choppy than Pogo’s work, though the music itself is much more choppy too. Although, Dainumo did a great job of making Dorothy look like she was singing the entire song. There really isn’t any clarity to the words that she’s singing though, which is one of the reasons why I think the video and music seems so choppy.
The various concepts that Dainumo seems to be working with in his work is the collaboration of pieces of movie clips along with pieces of movie scenes to create final pieces of video art. Within each video that he makes I think the concepts for each change due to whichever movie he’s remixing. For the remix incorporating the movie The Wizard of Oz, it seems as though Dainumo is trying to present to whimsical yet mysterious aspect behind the actual movie, and by turning Dorothy into the lead singer instead of lead character transitions the entire piece of the remixed video. For instance he clipped a lot of scenes of characters dancing together which shows the joyful emotions represented in the original film. Though some of his other videos seem to incorporate concepts of the main sounds used within the film. For example, his remix video “Black Mambo,” of the movie Kill Bill shows a video that has shrieking sounds such as swords clashing, feet stomping, knives being thrown and any other weapon-based sound involved in the original movie. This makes the feeling of the video very rugged and frightening, even though it essentially still incorporates the same ideas that the original movie did.
Dainumo’s work is slightly like mine, although like Pogo I am interested in the way that he transforms different clips of the movies to parts of his songs so that it flows together smoothly. Within my own work I want to take music and put it with old clips of movies or cartoons to essentially give the video an eerie feel. I feel that Dainumo presents the opposite within his own work; by turning the dialogue in movies into lyrical songs he changes the meaning behind the video. Although I’m only in the beginning stages, I want to be able to somewhat incorporate the meaning that some of the videos actually bring in the beginning. For example, in the old Dumbo films, there was a lot of mysterious and somewhat disturbing, dreamlike qualities I want to add onto the final piece of the video and song collaboration. Although his work is really interesting, I think that I’m essentially only interested in the way that he mashed up the music with the video clips.
http://www.youtube.com/user/dainumo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDvPv69dCFs (Black Mambo video)
http://soundcloud.com/dainumo
http://www.last.fm/music/Dainumo
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