A Digital Dérive
For my digital derive I decided to go to where almost all of my derives start or end up eventually. YouTube. I have been going on derives for years and have not even known it, generally, though I find myself starting with a specific goal in mind and then I end up getting distracted and following a tangent, to another tangent until instead of completing my math homework, I have spent an hour and 30 mins learning, watching, and discovering all sorts of seemingly random things.
For example, after one such recent derive I somehow found myself tracking down the sample from a part of Kanye West's song New Slaves and found that it was a sample from a Turkish rock band from the year 1969 (the song Gyöngyhajú lány from the band Omega). Anyways, I have always been someone who really enjoys consuming content on YouTube, in fact of all the platforms available right now I would say that I consume the most content via YouTube rather than something like Netflix or Hulu. Going into this assignment I thought that YouTube would be best suited for this type of experience because YouTube actively curates the videos that it is going to recommend to you. Not to mention that the Algorithm is actively trying to get you to continue watching and stay on the website.
All journeys have to have a starting point, so I figured that I would start with music, I enjoy listening to music on YouTube more than anything else because I feel like I have more control and also can see what other people are thinking about a particular track, a feature that popular music streaming app like Spotify does not have. Another thing that YouTube offers with music is remixes and original works from smaller artists that are much more accessible and easier to find. The song I decided to go with was Veridis Quo by Daft Punk (a song that I have recently discovered and developed an obsession with) I clicked what I believed to be the music video for it, but soon found out in the description of the video and the comments that it was fan-made and featured clips from Daft Punks 2006 short film Electroma.
I always love scrolling through the comments and seeing what other people think of a video, and how it makes them feel if it reminds them of a certain time in their lives. It is a very connecting experience to have. It is also interesting to see how internationally famous artists are from the US or vis versa, usually, I judge this by scanning the comments and seeing how many different languages there are. Or, we have all seen the comment that a person has linked to a specific place “Much love from Norway!”. It did not take long for Daft Punk's big hit songs to follow up after this smaller song, I soon found myself listening to One More Time and Get Lucky. However, towards the end of my 30 min journey, a song from their Tron Legacy soundtrack began to play, a movie that I had totally forgotten about. In another tab, I went and googled the film to see when it was released and saw that it was released in 2010…9 freaking years ago.
“Holy shit I’m old.” I thought to myself. I then went back to YouTube and began looking at the other songs on the soundtrack (well over my 30 min mark at this point) and then found myself ending my little digital derive on this final clip. I remembered being 9 years younger and wanting to be that guy when I grew up…not a care in the world, a sick Ducati bike. What started as just a little 30 min music listening session became me recalling a film that I had totally forgotten about and feeling an intense emotion of nostalgia and just a weird sort of prophetic moment for myself. I was inspired by the cinematography of that scene I had seen years ago. And now I am wondering if my love for film and storytelling started manifesting back with my 13-year-old self watching Tron Legacy with my family for the first time.
