I was part of the team that created the first meme,

and this is our story.

To some extent, that goes all the way back,

to graduate school at Ohio State University,

where Robert Larry, John Chadwick and I,

were members of the Computer Graphics Research Group.

That was a period where computer graphics,

and digital media was just beginning.

So, after graduate school,

John Chadwick, myself and my wife, Susan Amcloud,

we formed a company which we call "Unreal Pictures",

and our specialty was in the animation of characters.

I wrote software,

which was released with the very first version,

of 3D Studio Max.

One of the functions was that you could take any motion,

and map that or apply it to any character,

so the dancing baby motion actually started out,

as an adult-like motion.

So, I think what makes the dancing baby so fascinating,

it's an unexpected combination.

What's interesting is that the dancing baby,

which became the first meme,

was actually a sample file,

to give the customers an idea about how our software worked.

So, the idea was that animators could then modify it.

Our customers took the sample file that we had created,

and started making renderings,

and one of those customers was Rod Lucie at Lucas art.

So, that became the source of all the different versions,

of the dancing baby that you've seen.

Facebook actually wasn't really invented until 2004,

Twitter 2006,

Instagram 2010,

so, it was pre-social media,

but it actually spread in a fashion,

that's similar to social media today.

It spread through email.

But really what caused the baby to become a meme, I think,

was that in 1997,

the Ally McBeal television show,

used the dancing baby to create an episode of Ally McBeal,

that was I think one of the most popular episodes.

- Alright, Mr. Huggy, you wanna dance?

Let's go.

(upbeat music)

♪ Hooked on the feeling ♪

- The phones were ringing with journalists,

and the news media wanting to know,

well, how could something like this happen? (laughs)

There were interviews that were requested that I gave.

USA Today, I remember,

seeing the dancing baby renderings,

going across their front page.

A 16-year old high school student named Rob Sheraton,

his website collected those,

and allowed people to upload and download the files.

- It's just the kind of stupid quirky little thing,

that just thrives on the internet.

- That continued to spread the meme itself.

(camera lights flashing)

When you talk about memes and so forth,

all of them involved a certain aspect,

of are there artists taking in,

and altering the original work,

so there's a sense of collective artistic collaboration,

and it's somewhat accidental in the sense that,

you don't know who's gonna take,

the original source material and alter it.

This idea of collective collaboration,

is something that the dancing baby and other memes,

all memes kind of have in common,

and so 25 years later,

(laughing)

I was contacted by HFA Studio,

and they approached me with the idea,

of let's make a dancing baby NFT.

We now live in a world where art is shared,

often times without artists being remunerated,

for their efforts,

so the NFT is one way to create a livelihood,

out of their artistic expression.

The idea was that the original creators would take the file,

and create a digitally restored version,

so now I think for the first time,

we can see the original baby with much more clarity,

and much more beauty,

and more than that in this spirit of creative collaboration,

let's invite other artists from around the world,

to participate and allow them to create a re-imagining,

of what the dancing baby might be today.

So, the artist line up,

for the re-imagining of the dancing baby,

included Chris Torres who created the Nyan cat meme.

It's kind of a meme of a meme,

and so this collection then will be offered,

as a set of NFTs.

(suspenseful music)

Well, I'm very excited about the possibilities,

especially for creative artists,

and I'm glad to be part of this historical,

the milestone of the first meme and the first viral video.