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Matt Harding

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For the British musician of the same name, see Matt Harding (musician).

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Matthew "Matt" Harding (born September 27, 1976) is an American video game developer and Internet celebrity known as Dancing Matt for his viral videos that show him dancing in front of landmarks and street scenes in various international locations. Harding has since achieved fame through widespread coverage of his travel exploits in major print and broadcast media outlets.[1][2][3][4][5]

He is originally from Westport, Connecticut.[6] He began his game industry career working for a video game specialty store called Cutting Edge Entertainment, Harding later worked as an editor for GameWeek Magazine in Wilton, Connecticut, and then as a software developer for Activision in Santa Monica, California and then Brisbane, Australia.

Harding claims that a sarcastic joke about the popularity of shoot 'em up games led Pandemic Studios to develop the game Destroy All Humans!, on which he received a conceptual credit. Saying he "didn't want to spend two years of my life writing a game about killing everyone", he quit his job and began traveling, leading to the production of his first video.[7]

'Where the Hell is Matt?'

Harding was known for a particular dance, and while videotaping each other in Vietnam, his travel companion suggested he add the dance. The videos were uploaded to his website for friends and family to enjoy. Later, Harding edited together 15 dance scenes, all with him center frame, with the background music "Sweet Lullaby (Nature's Dancing 7" Mix)", a 1992 world music song by Deep Forest. The original Song that uses lyrics from a dying Solomon Islands language was recorded in 1971 by a French ethnomusicologist at the Solomon Islands near Papua New Guinea. The Song, Rorogwela, was sung by a young woman named Afunakwa. According to the video "Where the Hell is Afunakwa" by Matt Harding, Afunakwa died in 1998.

(The original "Sweet Lullaby" music video, which was nominated by MTV for music video of the year, consists of a little girl riding a tricycle in front of iconic scenes from around the globe. The same clip was used as a station identification for the Australian television network SBS.)

The video was passed around by e-mail and eventually became "viral", with his server getting 20,000 or more hits a day as it was discovered, generally country by country due to language barriers, before the launch of major video upload sites.

Harding created a second version of the video in 2006, with additional dancing scenes from subsequent travels, called "Dancing 2006". At the request of Stride, a gum brand, he accepted sponsorship[8] of this video, since he usually travels on a limited budget.

His videos are viewable on YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo and his own site wherethehellismatt.com. His second video has been watched 11,810,144 times on YouTube as of November 03, 2008 and Harding's YouTube channel is ranked "#92 - Most Subscribed (All Time) - Directors" as of July, 2008.[9][10] Harding released his third dancing video on June 20, 2008. The video is the product of 14 months of traveling in 42 countries. The background music/song of this video is called as "Praan" composed by Garry Schyman and sung by Palbasha Siddique, and the lyrics have been adapted from the poem "Stream of Life" from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore.

Major media coverage

Matt's video clips have appeared on television shows including:

Matt was bumped from Good Morning America on September 8, 2005, due to coverage of Hurricane Katrina, but appeared May 31, 2006, dancing outside the GMA studio in Times Square with footage from his videos displayed on the Panasonic Astro Vision screen on One Times Square.

In November 2006, Harding was invited to lecture at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont about the experience of making the video and subsequent fame. He also was filmed dancing with students from the college.[11]

In 2007, Jawed Karim, one of the founders of YouTube, stated that Harding's video is his favorite video posted to Youtube. [12]

On July 22nd, 2008 NASA featured Harding's 3rd video on their APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) website, titled "Happy People Dancing on Planet Earth", making claim of humans worldwide sharing a common love of dance. The website states that "few people are able to watch the above video without smiling".[13]

Videos

Videogame development credits

Harding's development credits include:[14]

Parodies

  • On the FX sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Matt Harding is parodied on episode "Frank Sets Sweet Dee on Fire" by "The Dancing Guy" (a bald local celebrity on a local access channel that dances to rave music in front of different shots of nature while wearing nothing but his underwear or a diaper).

References

  1. ^ Benji Lanyado (December 23, 2006). "Dance, dance, wherever you may be". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2008-07-10. Retrieved 2006-12-28. In the year we became obsessed with YouTube and MySpace, perhaps it's no surprise that a blog of a bloke doing a silly dance around the world got five million hits [...] Tis the season to give out awards. So, here's another one. My award for Alternative Travel Hero for 2006 goes to (cue drum roll, split screen of smiling nominees) ... Matt Harding. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ Andrea Sachs (October 22, 2006). "The Guy Who Danced Around the Globe". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2008-07-10. Retrieved 2006-12-28. So, where the hell is Matt? We found him in Seattle, but before that, Matt Harding, 30, was everywhere. In 2003, the video-game maker performed a silly free-form dance in more than a dozen countries, which he filmed and then posted on his Web site at http://www.wherethehellismatt.com. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ^ James Gilden (September 3, 2006). "Amateurs' talent: Giving us a local perspective on the world". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2006-12-28. THE man in the video is doing some sort of quirky dance in a foreign land, arms flailing and flopping, feet moving as if walking over hot coals. There is nothing graceful or beautiful about the dance. Nonetheless it communicates an infectious joy that defies easy characterization. In short, it is fun to watch. [...] "It's just something I've always done," said Matt Harding, who created and stars in the video. "It's that dance that kids do when they're 2 or 3 years old. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ Kristin Jackson (October 5, 2006). "Dancing around the world (and Web)". Seattle Times. Archived from the original on 2008-07-10. Retrieved 2006-12-28. It's a 20-something's fantasy: Travel around the world, dance a lot and get paid to do it. [...] Matt Harding of Seattle made that dream come true. And he's turning into an Internet star, thanks to a short video he made of his recent trip that's become wildly popular on the Web. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Mike Musgrove (July 13, 2008). "Product Placement Creeps Into Amateurs' YouTube Offerings". Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-07-14. Matt Harding has this silly dance he does, this running-in-place thing where he waves his arms around spastically. If it had a name, you might call it the Excited Toddler. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. ^ McGrath, Charles (2008-07-08). "A Private Dance? Four Million Web Fans Say No". New York Times. Archived from the original on 2008-07-10. Retrieved 2008-07-08. Mr. Harding, who grew up in Westport, Conn., skipped college at the suggestion of his father,
  7. ^ Jordan Smith (August 26, 2005). "Dancing Matt coming to town". Austin Chronicle. Archived from the original on 2008-07-10. Retrieved 2006-12-16. Harding didn't. "I … didn't want to spend two years of my life writing a game about killing everyone," he said {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ^ "Meet Matt". Stride gum. Archived from the original on 2007-03-20. Retrieved 2006-12-16. We really liked the idea of a ridiculously long dance round the world. So we supported him on his second tour.
  9. ^ "mattharding2718 Channel". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2008-07-10. Retrieved 2007-03-15. #100 - Most Subscribed (All Time) - Directors #12 - Most Viewed (This Month) #7 - Most Viewed (This Month) - Directors
  10. ^ "Directors - Most Subscribed (All Time)". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2008-07-10. Retrieved 2008-07-10. #99
  11. ^ Harding, Matt (2006-12-14). ""Where the Hell is Matt?" Lecture Part 1 of 3". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2008-08-29. Retrieved 2008-08-29.
  12. ^ "YouTube co-founder tells grads to be persistent, take risks". Retrieved 2008-10-14. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month= and |coauthors= (help)
  13. ^ "Astronomy Picture of the Day". ASD at NASA. 2008-07-22. Archived from the original on 2008-08-29. Retrieved 2008-08-29. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  14. ^ "Matthew Harding". MobyGames. Archived from the original on 2008-07-10. Retrieved 2008-07-10. Games Credited Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow (2006), Bethesda Softworks LLC [...] Destroy All Humans! (2005), THQ Inc. [...] Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), Activision Publishing, Inc. [...] Army Men RTS (2002), 3DO Company, The [...] Dark Reign 2 (2000), Activision Publishing, Inc. [...] Battlezone II: Combat Commander (1999), Activision Publishing, Inc. [...] Battlezone (1998), Activision, Inc. [...] Zork: Grand Inquisitor (1997), Activision, Inc.

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