Adam Nash will lead a tour of his work on Thursday, May 22, 2008 between 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. US EDT. If you would like to take part in the tour, please contact adam at yamanakanash dot net.

Trace Aureity is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

Adam Nash is a new media artist, composer, programmer, performer and writer. He works primarily in networked real-time 3D spaces, exploring them as live audiovisual performance spaces. His sound/composition and performance background strongly informs his approach to creating works for virtual environments, embracing sound, time and the user as elements equal in importance to vision. Adam’s work has been presented in galleries, festivals and online in Australia, Europe, Asia and the Americas, including SIGGRAPH, ISEA, and the Venice Biennale. He also works as composer and sound artist with “Company in Space” (AU) and “Igloo” (UK), exploring the integration of motion capture into real-time 3D audiovisual spaces. He is currently undertaking a Master of Arts by Research at the “Centre for Animation and Interactive Media” at RMIT University, Melbourne, researching multi-user 3D cyberspace as a live performance medium; and he’s a Lecturer in “Computer Games and Digital Art” in the School of Creative Media at RMIT University. Read an interview here.

Avatar Orchestra Metaverse is a group of composers, performers, and media artists living in Europe, East Asia and North America who explore together the interactive possibilities of the Second Life online virtual reality platform to create works with open, interactive and possibly “infinite” elements. The Orchestra works with ideas that challenge conventional practices of creating and performing music, and finds new ways to conceive of and erase notions of identity, place, social, cultural and sexual identity, and the roles of composer, performer and listener.

PwRHm is an Avatar Orchestra work in progress that explores and embraces the sonic possibilities inherent in the frequency of the electrical currents that power most aspects of modern existence. The piece exposes the relationship between the harmonic series of the North American 60 Cycle AC current and of the European 50 Cycle AC current, and uses the breathing rhythms of the live individual performers, spread across 2 continents, to determine the dynamic between the relationships, sounds and movements of the virtual avatar players.

PwRHm uses 4 instruments created within the technical possibilities and limitations of the Second Life platform. The instrument sounds are made from sets of short sound samples of individual sine and square waves and field recordings of electric motors put together in a HUD (Heads Up Display) configuration by the Orchestra’s instrument builder, Andreas Mueller / Bingo Onomatopoeia. The sounds made by the players are therefore not streamed. Each avatar/player is playing, in real time, sounds through instrument controls visible on each of their computer screens to make the combined sound of the piece. The avatars also hold semi-transparent globes, or ‘receivers’, designed by media artist Sachiko Hayachi / Goodwind Seiling, that emit gradations of differently coloured particles according to the specific sound and volume they each play on their instruments. The set also includes two large blue water tanks that hold two of the players, and that provide illumination within the night sky surrounding the suspended virtual performance platform.

Program: Sarah Weaver with Weave Between the Body :: Avatar Orchestra Metaverse - PwRHm by Tina Pearson / Humming Pera :: Maria Chavez, avant-turntablist/performer :: ROMA: Economical and Effective.

Notes for Avatar Orchestra Metaverse performance PwRHm (2008).

Composer: Tina Pearson / Humming Pera, Victoria, Canada
Instrument Builder: Andreas Mueller / Bingo Onomatopoeia, Regensburg, Germany
Set Design: Sachiko Hayachi / Goodwind Seiling, Stockholm, Sweden www.e-garde.net

Performers for Avatar Orchestra Metaverse: Bingo Onomatopoeia (Andreas Mueller), Regensburg, Germany — Fernsing Llewelyn (Cathy Lewis), Victoria, BC, Canada — Free Noyse (Pauline Oliveros), Kingston, New York, USA — Goodwind Seiling (Sachiko Hayashi), Stockholm, Sweden — Gumnosophistai Nurmi (Leif Inge), Oslo, Norway — Humming Pera (Tina Pearson), Victoria, BC, Canada — Maxxo Klaar (Max D. Well), Regensburg, Germany — Miulew Takahe (Bjorn Eriksson), Solleftea, Sweden — Paco Mariani (Chris Wittkowsky), Regensburg, Germany — Zonzo Spyker (Viv Corringham), Minneapolis, USA, London, UK.

Last month, Pavig Lok summoned me mid-performance into the opera house of Intempesta Nox (direct SLURL teleport), to attend a live music performance. Not Residents playing real instruments streamed as audio into Second Life, as usually happens — here, instead, the avatars themselves were the musical instruments, spinning like digital tornadoes around the audience. This is the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse, a loose collaboration of numerous artists-their blog is here, tracking an impressive number of mixed reality performances around the world. This video is an excerpt from their hypnotic October show, and hopefully the stereophonics are good enough to convey the sensation of being amid these flying ripples of sound.

“[W]e upload samples and trigger them using HUDs on the screen,” AOM member Bingo Onomatopoeia tells me. “In most songs we use a visualization-device worn on the back to make it seen who is playing a note. Using this technique, every orchestra-member becomes a moving instrument. In the instrument I call ‘Onomatophone’, there are six flying spheres that are filled with samples, that fly through the audience, creating a ever-changing mix that is unique for each listener.”

As with most avant garde efforts, the results are an acquired taste, but there’s no disputing their ambition to reshape the boundaries of what’s considered music in Second Life and the wider metaverse. That in mind, I’ve included some excerpts [after the break] from a text written to accompany a recent AOM performance in Vienna.

Update, 11/30: Caterin Semyorka was also on-hand, and posted an evocative, illustrated report on her blog, Girl Meets Second Life.

Excerpts from “New Directions in Music by Avatars” written by Leif Inge

The way one approaches a virtual world like Second Life will inevitably influence the way one acts within it. Approaching it as a cooperative networking society rather than a construction ground, the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse opens up a new field for new experiments in music.

There is a sort of surreal irony in doing art in an artificial world, it is so obvious that it can only be distinguished in definition. It is only terminology, what you name the thing, that makes the canvas different from the wall it hangs on. In here more than out side, both are mere representations, and it is hard to maintain an art versus everything else discourse because the daily routine in Second Life is always already a surreal vision created by humans. Everything is by default interactive, audiovisual and ever changing. Avatars takes shape after Marcel Duchamp’s nude descending the stairs, blood pours from the sky and the world can at any time turn into a painting by Rene Magritte.

The emerging art scene in Second Life have received their attention too, though rarely has it managed to anything but looking for the artwork as we already have it defined. It has failed but to generalize and simplify; if it looks like paintings, then it is art. If its looks like sculpture, then it’s art… This desire to reach a new audience and new ways of promotion has lead to an influx of bands, but all the famous bands having played here simply stream their playing from a studio into Second Life and have their avatar representations play on a prop looking like a proper instrument but really have nothing to add to it…

Originally the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse arose to the needs to perform two projects rather simultaneous, one by Harold Schellinx and the other by Shintaro Miyazaki, or in this world they are better known as Hars Hefferman and Maximillian Nakamura… It is an ever-changing mix of backgrounds and generations shaping the orchestra at any time. What it does have at present is a dedicated core of about 15 members, to which they also add guest performers and guest sound installations occasionally. To approach the idea of an orchestra in such an elastic manner makes the logistics easier as the performers are based in both Europe, North America, and East Asia, potentially adding the rest of the world too.

Many of the performers are also traveling artists, and performs from whatever place they’re in. The orchestra’s membership constitution, or lack of such, contribute to the aesthetics as another aspect of the indeterminate process of playing in Second Life. In addition to the changing body of the orchestra, there is the ever-present time delays affecting all use of broadband cooperation. Simply put, it takes time from playing the sound to hearing the sound. Even if the orchestra perform composed pieces and do follow a score and a conductor, all the factors in live performances are dependent on both the performers and the environment. It will never achieve the same piece sound exactly the same each time. [Avatar Avant Garde: Metaverse Orchestra Turns Avatars Into Musical Instruments blogged by Hamlet on New World Notes]

Using many of the possibilities unique to the Second Life medium, A Rose Heard At Dusk is a participatory artwork that turns visitors into performers. It was designed specifically for the cavern space under the Opera House on Big Pond Island. The work is designed to be “played” by visitors avatars. Walking, flying and jumping through the space, avatars create a unique audiovisual composition, different every time. Colours and sounds combine to create a spatially immersive musical and visual experience.

The work can be played by single avatars, but it really comes alive when friends play it together. It blends the different meanings of “play”. By playing in the space, visitors are actually playing the space like an audiovisual instrument, creating endless variations of sound and vision. It looks different at different times of day, the light reacting differently with all of the translucent colours. It sounds different from different positions - all sounds are attached to shapes in the space, some sounds stay still while others move, some sounds are triggered by avatar proximity, while some are constantly sounding. Combined with the movements of visitors avatars, this creates an endlessly changing immersive audiovisual experience.

For the study three professional musicians were placed in separate studios at the Sonic Arts Research Center and asked to perform under a variety of conditions that simulated geographically displaced network performance, such as different latencies. One scenario in which computer generated graphics (Avatars) was introduced to test the performers interactions is described in detail. Network Performance Scenarios can be reviewed at here.

1. Network Simulation: Each musician in a separate space with basic monitoring under the following conditions:
1a. no-latency monitoring
1b. stable latency monitoring (90 - 150 ms)
1c. variable latency monitoring (90 - 150 ms)

2. Video Link (3 way iChat)
2a. Video link with no latency
2b. Video link with Stable Latency

3. Enhanced Monitoring: Each musician in a separate space with enhanced monitoring under the following conditions:
3a. Spatialised monitoring with no latency
3b. Spatialised monitoring with stable latency (90 - 150 ms)
3c. Spatialised monitoring with variable latency (90 - 150 ms)
3d. Spatialised and Ancillary monitoring with stable latency (90 - 150 ms)
3e. Spatialised and Ancillary monitoring with variable latency (90 - 150 ms)

4. Avatars: Each musician in a separate space with visual avatar presence from other musicians
4a. Basic monitoring, stable latency with Basic Avatar
4b. Basic monitoring, stable latency with Audio-Modulated Avatar
4c. Spatialised monitoring, stable latency with Basic Avatar
4d. Spatialised and Ancillary monitoring, stable latency with Basic Avatar
4e. Spatialised and Ancillary monitoring, stable latency with Audio-Modulated Avatar
4f. Spatialised and Ancillary monitoring, variable latency with Audio-Modulated Avatar

5. Traditional Performance Scenario
5a. Musicians sharing one stage

Pieces Played:
Ornette Coleman - “Bird Food”
Pedro Rebelo - “One Note”

ONE NOTE
Pedro Rebelo 2007

One player begins a long note on a chosen pitch
Other players slowly join in and approach the same pitch

Once the whole ensemble is playing the same pitch as long sustained notes….
Player begin to deviating from the pitch slightly

Players gradually stop, leaving one player sustaining the resulting pitch
Repeat from line 2

Disparate Bodies is a network performance that explores multi-modal remote presence. The performance happens simultaneously in three sites (Belfast, NY and Stanford, California). The stage performance in NY features a laptop musicians and two Remote.bots. These are robotic entities that host the physical and musical gestures which are performed by the remote participants in the various locations. They consist of reflective elements which move according to the analysis of each audio stream and project glimpses of 3D rendered imagery around the performance space. The performance is based on the notion of performance entities as reflected by telepresence, robotics and sound systems. As such, each performer (local and remote) has a specific sound diffusion set up and a chosen 3D avatar which consists of abstract representations of movement and gesture. The performance is improvised with reference to strategies that intend to explore the relationship between sound and movement. The performance uses high quality audio streaming software developed by CCRMA and gesture, robotic and 3D rendering technologies developed at SARC.

Instrumentation: Saxophones (Franziska Schroeder), Moustrap (Mark Applebaum), Piano/Computer (Pedro Rebelo), Remote.bot (Tom Davis) and Frequencyliator (Alain Renaud).

Music Rooms: The hive23 environment contains three rooms. Each room is associated with a separate musical stream that is determined by the avatars currently within that room. Each avatar is “tagged” with music they have chosen from a list of musical pieces, available outside the entrance to the three rooms. When an avatar enters or leaves a room, a new sequence of musical variations is produced for that room. These variations combine and rework parts from the songs identified with those avatars then inhabiting that room.

Music Analysis and Remixing: Each musical variation embodies harmonic and rhythmic manipulations that impose musical coherence on each combination of parts drawn from the songs worn by avatars within a particular room. These manipulations introduce variety into the note structure within each part, and the contrapuntal structure across parts, in order to make each remix unique.

Scenario: Each avatar will start by exploring each of the three rooms, encountering shifting populations of other avatars that are also exploring those spaces. Eventually each avatar would presumably spend increasing amounts of time within the room that most consistently produces musical output preferred by that avatar. This preference develops collectively as other particular avatars also increasingly spend time within that space. The shifting population of avatars in each room potentially evolves into a collective musical author with discernible musical preferences.

Other Applications: The rooms in Second Life could potentially be implemented as physical spaces in a club or art installation, where persons (each tagged with a particular song) take the place of the avatars. Or the rooms could be implemented as channels in a location-based multi-user application, tied to something like GPS navigation systems in cars. A driver following approximately the same route at roughly the same time each day would gradually settle on a particular channel, as other musically compatible drivers do likewise.

The rooms could also be seen as publishing spaces, for example, web pages where several advertising jingles coexist in the form of ongoing remixes that evolve increasing compatibility over time. The necessary ingredient for each of these applications is a music software engine that can create coherence and variety, on-the-fly, among unexpected combinations of musical inputs.

Implementation and Hosting: The music engine is a Smalltalk/Seaside/C++ based process that runs on a separate server. It receives requests via http from Linden scripts attached to Second Life objects. The server process calculates new remixes, renders MIDI-based scores into audio results via Quicktime, and streams the audio via Shoutcast servers to SL land parcels underlying each shared musical space. The music engine / web server is currently hosted on a four-core Intel Mac Pro.

Location in Second Life: The hive23 environment is located on the Second Life mainland at Mabinogion (190, 43, 63). Or it can be found within Second Life by searching Places for “hive23″. The software is currently in testing mode. The list of musical inputs currently available will be augmented over time, including the addition of musical results generated within the environment itself.

Web Site: A web site describing the environment, as well as an existing Croquet-based implementation can be found at: http://tone23.org. For a closer look at the music engine there’s a Seaside-based single-user remixer called Qtone online: http://tone23.org/qtone.

Minimalist video document of a live avatar performance of Maximilliam Nakamura’s composition ‘Fadheit’ performed by the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse in Second Life, 27th March 2007.

The installation, hosted by the SL Phoenicia Center for Contemporary Art, captures words and pieces of the conversations that happens amongst the avatars inside its space (a circular space marked off by seven speakers) and translate these pieces in sounds. Tones and rhythms are directly influenced by the conversation progress. Furthermore WhisperBox provides also a visualization form of the spoken words, appearing near each avatar in a sort of 3D balloon. The displayed text then is an echo of the previous conversations. Clicking on different avatars with active balloons, their spoken words are played as music, and the previous conversations are immortalized, in a sort of inextricable and synaesthetic loop, made out of real and virtual, present and past, expression and representation.” Vito Campanelli, Neural.

Talent-Spotting in Virtual Worlds

“…At Radio 1 we want to bring a new level of social interaction to our virtual broadcasts. We are hoping that the bands featured on-air will have their own custom-built avatars, playing in the virtual world. So if we have the Red Hot Chilli Peppers playing a gig, visitors to a Radio 1 virtual space will see avatars of Anthony Kiedis and Flea, mimicking the action in the real world.

We also believe it is crucial that the virtual audience can interact with the event. It is about replicating the “liveness” of an event, not just broadcasting it. Additionally, Radio 1 wants to find ways of allowing the audience in these worlds to actually affect the real event. I see no reason why they cannot be asking their musical heroes questions, alongside virtual Radio 1 DJs, either via Instant Messenger or VoIP. This deeper social interaction, that mirrors real world events, would do much to enhance the ripples that resonate around digital communities.” From Talent-spotting in virtual worlds by Daniel Heaf, BBC.com.