For this project we had to make an interactive “remix” of popular internet memes. Some of my favorite youtube memes are from the youtube channel Schmoyoho. They have a segment of videos that are widely popular where they “songify” stories on the news or other popular youtube memes.
By turning already hilarious videos into songs, they create catchy works of art, and those videos themselves become famous memes. One of their most famous memes is the “Bed Intruder Song”; both the original news story and the version that they auto-tuned into a song are famous, but the Bed Intruder Song alone has over 118,000,00 views, surpassing the original. So you can run and tell that homeboy.
So I picked Schmoyoho’s memes as my material for this assignment. But I wanted to give it a twist: I also decided to do some subliminal messaging in my piece. I focused specifically on fast food. I sampled from the Schmoyoho memes that had a mention or reference to fast food. My first video meme was the Charles Ramsey “Dead Giveaway” song. Charles Ramsey makes several references to “McDonnalds”, and the way he says it is very comical. But Ramsey is also considered a hero from helping to rescue the 3 women locked in a basement in Ohio. So by Ramsey telling you that he was “Eatin’ my McDonnalds”, he is representing a positive connotation to a hero + fast food. My second video meme was the Dayum Drops songified “Oh my Dayum”. The youtuber Dayum Drops already has a large youtube following based on his ridiculous and over-the-top food reviews. His review of 5 Guys burgers got his review auto-tuned into the song “Oh my Dayum”. It’s another catchy Schmoyoho song, and watching Dayum Drops open that burger wrapper can really make you crave 5 Guys.
So once I had my videos picked out, I decided that I wanted to contrast the Schmoyoho videos by putting them next to the originals. Then I trimmed the clips I wanted in Corel Video Editor to different bits where either Charles Ramsey or Dayum Drops was referencing fast food. I used a text object to display a flashing message at the top stating “Eat fast food – now”. I then trimmed a sound loop and had it play in the background to tie everything together.
I used the patch to connect a controller as input so that you could scratch the videos and enjoy watching Dayum Drops unwrap that 5 Guys burger again and again and again.
[watch the video below]
I connected a ps3 controller to my computer (to use as the controller) via a USB charging cable. I had to use MotioninJoy to properly detect the ps3 controller to serve as input. Interestingly enough, with MotioninJoy I could tell the computer to use the ps3 controller as an X-Box 360 controller. This worked so that the inputs were detected to be the same as the patch we had done in class; which had been set up for an X-Box 360 controller.
In PureData I used “send” and “receive” objects to direct inputs from the ps3 controller to the patch that controlled the video memes. In the video meme patch, I had to strip the audio from the videos, and load it in separately for each video. I had to use .wav files for the audio and .avi files for the video. Avi files were the only things that worked at all for video! I spent so much time figuring that out. Even .mp4 and .mov files wouldn’t play in PureData for me.
But it all came together (magically and after much PureData struggling). My piece represents the influence of fast food in our culture through the medium of internet video memes.