Dancing to Daft Punk... with your hands

music

Daft Hands probably doesn't mean anything to you, but it's likely that you've seen a video of a pair of hands, inscribed with Daft Punk lyrics, performing a well-choreographed dance routine. Difficult to describe, but the result is something hypnotic.

The original Daft Hands video: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger:

Contributors

Austin Hall

Pierre Garnier

"Daft Hands will remain a reference to internet video culture"

Austin Hall is the American student who created Daft Hands.

It was at college during an exam that I came up with the idea of Daft Hands. I was a bit bored and I had the Daft Punk song in my head. I started to write the words of the song on my hands, just like that, without thinking, and I thought to myself, it would be funny to do a little dance with them. When I got home, I put the song on, and spent a few days putting together a little routine. I recorded a video of it and posted it on YouTube. It was in June 2007, I think. The video just took off. I was even invited to repeat the performance live on The Ellen Degeneres Show [a famous American talk show].

I launched a collection of accessories with a Daft Hands logo I made on Photoshop [here]. There are clothes, cups, badges... I didn't expect much from it, but it worked quite well. Of course, I don't earn enough from it to live on, but I've got customers from everywhere - Denmark, Canada etc.

I'm not getting any ideas, I know that some day or other the buzz will disappear. But I do think Daft Hands will remain a reference to internet video culture."

Austin Hall

United States
Cinema student

The Daft Hands creator live on US TV

"Something stupid that made us laugh"

Pierre Garnier is a French webuser who, inspired by Daft Hands, created his own version, called Papayes Hands, with two friends.

I found out about Daft Hands on French TV just under a year ago. They showed the original video, explaining the concept with Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. I found it original, funny, and quite impressive as it's hard to do. It became massive On the internet. Everyone's come across it somewhere.

It was soon copied; everyone wanted to make their own version. Some people used dirty nails, others rings, some even their whole bodies... Me and two of my friends decided to have a go with a funny song we'd heard at a party the night before. We posted it on Dailymotion [a French video sharing website] for a laugh. In our version, we only used three fingers, something stupid that made us laugh.

Then we started to receive tags and messages. Some people told us that someone else had made a better video along to Daft Punk, without realising that ours was a comic tribute to the original. Anyway, it managed to find its way to the site's main page, and was even shown at a party organised by Dailymotion!"

Pierre Garnier