Sioux Center, Iowa — A couple of Dordt University students from Sioux Center are going to be featured on a television show to air on Fox.
Dordt officials tell us that about 10 years ago, Alex and Derek Koops were watching videos of kinetic contraptions when they stumbled upon domino art – design projects built out of thousands of dominoes that are eventually toppled. They were intrigued enough to start making their own builds in their parents’ house in Sioux Center and to eventually post YouTube videos online. They slowly built up their domino collection through birthday gifts and Christmas presents. They also collected ping-pong balls, Hot Wheels tracks, and other contraptions to construct Rube Goldberg machines, a chain reaction that performs a simple task in a complicated way.
Now, with 200,000 YouTube subscribers and over 40 million total video views, DaksDominos – Derek and Alex’s YouTube channel – is YouTube verified, which highlights the legitimacy of their brand. They are proud owners of a YouTube Silver Creator Award, which is given to YouTubers with 100,000 subscribers. They have had several videos that have gone viral, including one themed around Dude Perfect, a sports and comedy group, that currently has 9.7 million views.
Derek Koops, who is a junior digital media major at Dordt says they had been building for five or six years at that point. He says “…we maybe had 1,000 subscribers on YouTube. Within a couple months after that viral video, we went up to 10,000. And we’ve grown from there.”
Recently, Derek and Alex jetted off to Hollywood to participate in the FOX television series Domino Masters, a show where “teams of domino enthusiasts go head-to-head in a toppling tournament to create mind-blowing masterpieces, with infinite possibilities and thousands of tiles and unique kinetic devices.” The show is set up in a bracket format; 16 teams participate in the show, but only four compete at a time.
He says FOX found them through their YouTube videos and thought they would be a good fit for the competition, and says, “FOX was willing to take a risk to give domino artists from around the country a chance to show off their skills to a larger audience than just YouTube.”
Alex Koops says what he most appreciated about being on the show was the unlimited materials to build their displays. The brothers own about 20,000 dominoes, but nothing compared to the many dominoes and gizmos that they had available during filming.
Domino Masters is on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. Central on FOX. The episode featuring DaksDominos airs on March 23.
