Composing music with youTube videos

The art of music composition meets the
interesting world of video montage

 

Kutiman

Ophir Kutiel (aka Kutiman) is a musician, artist, producer, video editor. As of 2009 he is also a person of enduring youTube fame—not for doing something entirely new, but for doing it so well, and for basing his project on social network.

The Kutiman projects

The story goes like this. In 2009 Kutiman confined himself in a room for three months to build songs out of various video clips found on youTube: looping, layering, melding ... eventually transforming numerous unrelated videos into engaging performances. The result of his efforts? Several fascinating music compositions that I find astonishing and delightful in equal portion. Much to his credit, Kutiman compellingly frames and reveals music talent sometimes not readily apparent by the artist's video alone.

 

The participants

The "participants" in Kutiman's videos had no prior knowledge of collaboration. They are everyday souls who simply posted a musical video on youTube. Ordinarily that would have been the end of it. Then Kutiman stepped in, providing unsolicited compositional vision and collaborative glue. Kutiman included credits each video, in the form of links to the original videos, thereby giving full credit to the clandestine collaborators.

Assembling the pieces from the cutting room floor

Kutiman's workflow must have been like building a song out of audio loops—layering drum patterns, bass runs, guitar riffs, etc. If you're familiar with GarageBand, imagine choosing "loops" from GarageBand's "loop browser" ... but instead of building songs out of audio loops, Kutiman's basic building blocks were "found art" video footage from youTube. (And it's worth noting, samples and loops in Garageband are of well designed prefabricated lengths ... and they're perfectly tuned. Kutiman did not have a nicely refined palette of material from which to choose.)

In Kutiman's finished project we hear audio tracks from several videos simultaneously. That's what make the "song." But usually only one video image is visible at a time ... however sometimes Kutiman includes more than one video image, and to good effect.

In using youTube videos as his "sound-bite sample library" Kutiman composed songs by layering the combined audio of many videos clips. Other times he added accompaniment to a song (lyrics to a verse and chorus) written by a singer or instrumentalist.

Most of the source clips feature an individual playing or improvising on a solo instrument, someone kindly offering music lesson, a musical demonstration or tip, a small ensemble playing, an aspiring songwriter singing solo, or someone messing around with sound generators, oscillators or synthesizers. Thus, at once, Kutiman created remarkably beautiful songs and video montages. See for yourself!

 

Viewing credits and links to original footage

As mentioned, the finished projects are more interesting if you view some of the original footage, so do watch some of the raw material that Kutiman culled together for us.

To see the original video clip, click on the credit link. You can roll credits by clicking the red ‘CREDITS’ button during playback. This option is available only when watching his projects on www.thru-you.com

thru-you.com intentionally looks like youTube, so you might check the address bar of your browser to make sure you're in the right location.

By watching a few of the original videos you'll quickly understand how much creativity went into these projects.

Kutiman, Thru-you.com and copyright issues

It's no surprise that Kutiman's projects might raise copyright concerns and ownership objections. In creating his video remix art he worked exclusively with footage lifted from youTube: videos that others had recorded; other peoples' compositions, performances, and videos.

Anyone involved could claim copyright violation and demand that youTube and/or Kutiman permanently remove Kutiman's videos from public viewing or until or remunerative resolve were reached. A copyright infringement claim could occur at any time, and that would likely mean that the hosting site (youtube and his own website) may need to remove Kutiman's content (thus some of the following links may lead to nowhere, or merely to a 'removed' notice. Sorry if you run into any such dead ends in the links provided here.)

Nevertheless Kutiman's Thru-you productions stand presently. This is a testament to the good natured reception and acceptance by those haplessly swept into his work. Hopefully they have benefited in some way from his work.

Some of Kutiman's work was removed from youTube at the request of one the artists involved. Fortunately, at the time of this writing that work is currently online again, presumably due to a change of heart and a retraction of the objection.

All this begs the question, whose art is it anyway? For better or worse, that is a question that youTube and Google constantly challenge.

I personally have a lot of creative work that hold remunerative potential, largely because I own exclusive rights (to my expression of an idea) though copyright protection. Nevertheless I believe that Congress erred against the spirit of the original copyright law when it passed Sonny Bono's legislation The Copyright Extension Act. As of that day U.S. copyright protection became excessively repressive, so much so that we may never again see any copyrighted material pass into public domain. Unless something revolutionary happens, anytime a serious copyright expiration date approaches, corporate and estate interests will surely buy and extension to this bill. That's big business. The original intent of the copyright legislation was to offer rights of ownership that would reward creativity during the author's lifetime; the intent was not to extend ownership to estates and corporations in perpetuity.

Thought artist often recieve reward from copyrights, sometimes we see artists struggling with copyright strangleholds. For instance, Nina Paley devoted three years of her life to creating an animation entitled Sita Sings the Blues. Its soundtrack included several recordings by Annette Hanshaw. The dates of the recordings say they are in the public domain, and it was believed that they were, but a technicality arose, and Paley found herself with a finished product she couldn't sell without incurring enormous licensing fees. This led her to distribute and package the film as a free-of-charge, uncopyrighted full length animation.

Nina Paley's Free-Culture Activism is of interest, as is Copyleft, and Paley's own site.

The video remix genre

New as the concept may seem, Kutiman hasn't created a new art form. As early as the 1970s other were composing music via film/video remix and montage, such as the Emergency Broadcast Network (EBN) from the 1990s:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_H4b7-eZNM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjHwxYqcFbI&feature=related

Nevertheless, Kutiman's projects are noteworthy due to their high level of artistry, and their overall sense of warmth.

The success of such undertakings hinges squarely on meticulous timing ... and Kutiman’s sense of timing is impeccable. Without precision timing, his innovative interpretations and concepts would prove clever at best ... perhaps only annoying.

I expect Kutiman will inspire interest in this reemerging art form ... and the time is ripe. Over the past few decades only the fortunate or elite had access to the necessary video editing tools; today however we find capable tools on the average personal computer.

An appreciation of Kutiman's contribution

Although Kutiman handily "composes" a wide range of musical styles, there's nothing musically ground breaking about the finished pieces. Nevertheless they are engaging, fun, and full of heart ... and that's plenty for me!

Above all, Kutiman's creations reflect that many of us have artistic interests, and though our talents may be new, undiscovered, or undeveloped, our small accomplishments can be an integral part of a larger effort. In other words, appreciation, collaboration and recognition are sometimes closer than they appear, much closer than we realize ... and amazing things can happen when we allow ourselves be seen as artists and musicians ... even just by putting a small homemade video clip up on youTube.

Most inspiring is Kutiman's ability to peer deeply into another person's art. Thanks to his power of perception he elegantly framed this art so perhaps it becomes more accessible and well appreciated, even by those of us who might have otherwise failed to note the essential beauty therein.

We benefit from his ability to spot a diamond in the rough and reveal facets that may have gone unnoticed without his added craftsmanship.

I hope you enjoy Kutiman's projects as much as I have!

John Blasquez