“That kind of twitchy humor and DIY ethic that children have is like the lifeblood of internet humor,” Cicierega said at XOXO. He called his short Flash clips “animutation,” and the clips spawned an entire subgenre when his fans began making their own “fanimutations.”Ĭicierega’s early animated shorts, like “Hyakugojyuuichi” and 2005’s “Ultimate Showdown” - a jaunty cartoon about the end of the world - feel like relics of their time, but they all contain the core elements of most of today’s internet-based art: creative humor, fused with pop culture references and a sense of childish whimsy. But as time went on, he began to produce more and more ambitious work. By the time he was 14, he already had his first viral hit - 2001’s “Hyakugojyuuichi,” a short Flash-animated fusion of Japanese pop music and random pop culture images he found online.Īt first, Cicierega became known primarily for the novelty of being a preteen internet artist. The videos feature hand puppets performing skits about Harry Potter the most famous one, “The Mysterious Ticking Noise,” has been viewed more than 170 million times on YouTube and has become a beloved part of internet culture.īut as he explained to the crowd at 2016’s XOXO Festival, Cicierega is anything but a one-hit wonder: He’s spent his entire life immersed in creative technology and the web.Īs a kid, he was homeschooled by tech-loving parents who encouraged him to learn a wide variety of graphic design, sound engineering, and production skills. To understand Cicierega’s artistry and its specific connection to ’90s internet nostalgia, it helps to understand that he’s been making internet art since the ’90s - since before most people really understood what the internet was.Ĭicierega is perhaps still best known as the creator of the Potter Puppet Pals, a viral series of videos he started making in 2003. The artist, who has spent most of his life creating stuff on the internet, also makes digital music that’s about digital culture itself, and all of his work prompts questions like: What does it mean to take two songs with totally different meanings and fuse them into something else? What does the resulting mashup say about its components, and what does it say about us as listeners?Īn album as smart as Mouth Moods could only come from an artist as steeped in internet culture as Neil Cicierega ![]() Now he’s back with the surprising and delightful follow-up Mouth Moods.Īll three of Cicierega’s albums throw your favorite ’90s songs into a postmodern blender - with a particular fixation on Smash Mouth’s “All Star.” The best mashups unite unlikely songs, lyrics, or musical ideas and turn them into something simultaneously familiar and new, and Cicierega’s are nearly always weird and/or wonderful enough to delight.Įach of Cicierega’s three albums emphasizes the enduring influence of the 1990s in modern pop culture. ![]() It’s been three years since beloved internet mashup artist Neil Cicierega released Mouth Sounds and Mouth Silence, a pair of excellent albums that skillfully remixed beloved ’90s anthems and became cult hits online.
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