Basement Jaxx 'Never Say Never' by Saman Kesh

It's the near future, and the drop-off in proper dancing by humans is killing the flame of passion that keeps the human race going. So a Japanese couple decide to do something about it. Only Mr and Mrs Nakamatsu are having a few issues of their own...

With his typically off-the-wall premise, Saman Kesh's video for Basement Jaxx's Never Say Never somewhat harks back to a couple of classic 'white-coat'-themed vids for the Jaxx by Traktor. But Saman puts his own distinctively satirical (and butt-orientated) take on the whole lab scenario with his remarkable invention - The Twerkbot.

Featuring sensory stimuli and JAXX-patented buttocks technology – and every couple is going to want to have one. In fact, thanks to Saman's work with Alterian Inc. (who also made Daft Punk's helmets, and work a lot with Spike Jonze), it almost looks like the Twerkbot is ready to go into production...

SAMAN KESH:

"I wanted to make a creation that merged the Japanese obsession robotic/sex toys and the fact that the worlds 'dancing' population is starting to look less and less exciting as the music as become more 'synthetic'. So the irony of using a synthetic recreation to bring back such a human trait was kind of powerful to me. 

"The Build: My, now, dear friends at Alterian Inc. kicked ass. I brought the idea and a document of a rough mock-up of what I was looking for and what it needed to do as well as the features. They went off and kind of made a little more of a concrete sketch. We then tweaked and adjusted as we went along (since we didn't have a ton of time - 8 days to be exact). After visiting the shop almost every day and having our daily pow-wow of evolution, the robot was ready to show its stuff. 

"The Twerking: I always knew that I didn't want to do CG, but I also didn't wanna do full-on robotics. Mostly those two would have been impossible. Instead, I pitched the idea of puppeting the robot & adjusting in post. Alterian bought in and that's what we did. There were three puppeteers. One for the ass pump (the booty shakes). Another for the humping/thrusts (this was a professional Twerker). And finally another animator that worked the legs and knee joints. We later adjusted the "jittery" amount accordingly in post.

"Can you get one? I'll send you a pre-order link when it's up ;)"