Visit Mexico - Ruta Maya

I was very excited on Thursday evening. The second stage of Mexico’s official presence in Second Life was opened to the public. I was lucky enough to be commissioned to write the score for the project by Advanced Virtual Inc. a company developing the official presence of the Mexican Tourist Board in Second Life.

Ruta Maya is a 2 sim extension of Mexico’s presence in Second Life. It adds a new trail of Mayan sites to the existing very successful Chichen Itza exhibit. The project features a huge rainforest ( by Kriss Lehmann of Straylight fame ), a number of scaled reproductions of Mayan temples and ruins, a beach, the city of Campeche, a fort and a pirate ship. There are loads of things to do around the build as you explore, including hang gliding, rope slides up in the rainforest canopy, a waterfall you can walk behind, lots of animals to interact with, horse riding along the beach and much more.

You can visit the Ruta Maya sims here : http://slurl.com/secondlife/Visit%20Mexico%202/201/95/30

My role in the project was two fold. Firstly I created a very detailed environmental soundscape and secondly an orchestral score featuring authentic cultural instrumentation.

Here are some of the ’sleeve notes’ from the sound track :

In 2007 I provided a soundtrack to a promotional machinima of the Visit Mexico Chichen Itza project, to assist it’s successful bid to become a new wonder of the world. It was such a wonderful experience working with the team on the project that when the chance came to expand the already very successful Mexico presence in Second Life, I was very excited. The commissioning of a large scale custom soundtrack for the project was a tantalizing opportunity.

During the project process we had many discussions about the nature of the soundtrack, covering a wide range of issues, including how it should convey Mayan culture while remaining contemporary and emotional, and how it should be pitched in terms of emotional involvement and underscore. I would visit the sims under construction regularly and as the build grew up around me it became clear that this would be a stirring emotional place. To reflect this some parts of the soundtrack are quite rich and sensual, with rousing melodies and uplifiting drive, while other parts are more relaxed and contemplative. There are also some parts of the score which provide a more primal rhythmic pulse to underscore exploration.

Instrumentally the soundtrack features a wide range of authentic Mayan instrumentation, from many clay and wood flutes and ocarina, through water drums, a wide range of wood percussion and chonch shell horns. It also features full orchestra, with a large contingent of mallet instruments, including marimba and both metal and bamboo vibraphones.

It was a great honour to be commissioned to write music for this the official presence of the country of Mexico in Second Life and I sincerely hope you enjoy it.

Interview on Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe

I had a real fun time yesterday being interviewed by Paisley Beebe’s Tonight Live show on SLCN TV. It was really nice to be able to talk through some of the projects I have been involved with. Thanks to all those who came along the show! Including Poid Mahovlich and JenzZa Misfit who took some great photos :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/poid/2338752029/ < Poids pics

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/4534410_nTtrM/1/267027657_4VLmT < JenzZa’s Pics

Here is a link to the SLCN TV archive of the show.

Pangaea Island Herbie Hancock Competition special mention

Well the Pangaea Island competition results have been announced and unfortunately the entry submitted by Funk Shepherd and myself didnt win ! However it did get a nice little special mention as a runner up!

Here is a high quality version of the song to download for your iPod

Congrats “Sace“on winning the contest!

Viral Duets by Pipsi Bracken (a.k.a. Niki McCretton)

2ND LIVE is a relatively new initiative set up with a Arts Council grant here in England. It aims to explore the potential of live performance in Second Life. Its now reached its second commissioned work, Viral Duets by Niki McCretton ( known in Second Life as Pipsi Bracken ).

I was lucky enough to see the project developing as I helped with a some advice on sound in Second Life. It’s a fascinating concept, involving motion capture of many very long dance sequences, including a number of duets. The duets really work well giving a real sense of weight and presence.

The use of sound was also interesting. They chose to trigger sounds as the avatars moved between dance animations. Generally the sounds were long and reverberant, with long tails overlapping. This created a sensual intimate musical space for the dance to unfold.

Here is a big Flickr set of pics of me dancing with Pipsi !

Feature on official Second Life music blog

I was very happy to be featured recently on the official SL music blog. Thanks so much to Jesse Linden!

http://secondlife.com/showcase/blog.php?blog_category=5

PARSEC

PARSEC was released last saturday. The response has been quite overwhelming. Thanks so much to Bettina Tizzy of NPIRL and Hamlet Au of New World Notes for their gracious support.

Full reports can be found over at :

http://parsec.wordpress.com

but for now, here is a brief project summary :

PARSEC

Concept, Music and Sound by Dizzy Banjo
Virtual Architecture by Eshi Otawara
Scripting by Chase Marellan

PARSEC is a vast immersive environmental “instrument” for 7 avatars that listens to your voice and allows you to control a musical composition together.

It uses the Second Life voice system in a new and unusual way to control both music and movement of objects.

There is also a puzzle locked within the musical composition. Play the piece correctly and the solution will be revealed… Will you be able to solve it ?

“This is the kind of work that lights the way to the future for post-convergent art and entertainment.” Adam Ramona

“I couldn’t sleep after seeing PARSEC! It is so refreshing to see this level of innovation derived from the native or inherent capacity of the virtual environment. You really have invented an entirely new kind of instrument, I think, planting the seed for a new generation of participatory and collaborative real-time musical composition. I wonder, who will be the Mozart or Beethoven of the Parsec?” Keystone Bouchard

“This is what I imagined the metaverse would be like” Chance Abattoir

ARTIST INFORMATION

The PARSEC concept and interactive score was created by Dizzy Banjo, a composer increasingly working in the field of non linear soundtracks often in the virtual realm.

The beautiful dreamlike environment of PARSEC was created by Eshi Otawara. Eshi is an artist, painter and experienced Second Life builder.

PARSEC functions via the scripts of Chase Marellan, a well known programmer and author of many programming books, including the upcoming “Platform Second Life: Developing Real Life Applications” for Manning Press. Parsec was the inspiration for more than one chapter of the book.

The artists would like to thank InterSection Unlimited for graciously hosting the exhibit.
You can visit PARSEC here :

http://slurl.com/secondlife/InterSection/200/50/432

Please also join the PARSEC group in Second Life for project updates.

I’ll be doing some more blog post’s on this project soon.

DynaFleur opening tomorrow !

I was lucky enough to get involved with this great project recently. DynaFleur is an interactive installation by Douglas Story and Desdemona Enfield with Poid Mahovlich creating the wonderful landscape in which it sits.

DynaFleur is a huge sculptural object, featuring the vibrant photography of Douglas Story. It spans the entire Princeton South sim and has a series of different reactive spaces within it. These work with the open source reflexive architecture scripts the Keystone Bouchard developed. Desdemona really did some wonderful work with using them - as Keystone said it “raises the bar for reflexive architecture in SL”.

Here is a machinima video of the project by Kitty Lalonde :

Dyna Fleur from Kitty Lalonde on Vimeo.

As far as the sound and music went, I tried to work very closely with Doug to achieve the effect he desired. We both felt that the installation needed a sense of wonder and beauty, but with an uncertain motive - so it could be percieved as either “friendly” or potentially “menacing”.

One end of the sculpture is very technological and complex and acts in a way that is similar to technology imitating nature. The sound for this is mechanical and digital in nature - kind of like a technological cloud of sound. The other end of the installation is very organic. Here we discussed many common references and influences including the sound design in Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’. The result was a highly organic “squelch” achieved by me squishing ice cubes and processing them extensively.

Musically I really wanted to create something that had a sense of the delicate beauty of the flowers and the sculpture, but also to communicate how strange and almost dangerously enticing they are at such a large scale. The music also works directly with the installation sounds, throwing the seemingly non tuned sounds into a musical key.

I was really happy to be involved in this project, especially as its a way of developing the concepts of non linear sound tracks for the metaverse, which I am so keen to persue.

The installation opens tomorrow Sat the 5th Jan.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Princeton%20South/217/211/66

Full information on the project is available here at the project blog :

http://dynafleur.blogspot.com/

Metamusic to become voice based panel discussions in 2008

Just thought I’d do a quick update on the progress of the metamusic discussions during the holiday lull.

Metamusic is a group in Second Life focused on discussing the possibilites of the Second Life platform for creativity in the field of music and sound. This includes discussing best practise methods of implementing projects with the current architecture as well as suggestions and strategies for architectural improvements.

Over the last few months we have had a series of great meetings which have enabled a pretty wide cross section of Second Life society to express their views and aspirations for the musical capability of the Second Life platform.

Whilst being fascinating to hear all the different viewpoints, text only discussions have lead to a degree of chaos and confusion in the dialogue. This has been great for the opening series of discussions but, after discussing with Aric and Jesse from Linden Lab, I think its better if we move to a different format.

With that in mind, early in 2008 Metamusic will move to a series of focused voice based panel discussions. Each discussion will focus on tightly defined subjects and will specifically attempt to identify the things the community would like to achieve and possible technological starting points for their development.

Each panel will be recorded and a podcast made available. Of course the text based discussion will also continue, and will be logged and posted as usual.

At the moment I am putting together panelists for each discussion. These will comprise of a host, a series of experts working in the field, representation from the Architecture Working Group and where possible representation from Linden Lab.

As for duration, its undecided how to proceed here - they could be a series of panel discussions each week or bi weekly, or we may group them all togehter into two afternoons of intensive debate. Feedback on your preferance would be great!

Tagged !

Argh! I have been tagged by Tara5 Oh and I suspect Jenn Heinrichs (Ha! beat you to it Jenn!).

This meme seems to revolve around the following rules :

The “Eight Random Facts Blogmeme”:

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog

SL is currently down.. So here goes :

1. I was born in England, but almost all my family are Welsh, with various elements bits of French and Jewish culture in the family history..

2. This christmas I will be near the Alps in Germany, hopefully with wonderful music freely flowing into my head for an upcoming Second Life soundtrack for a country on the other side of the planet.

3. I’m currently trying to ween myself on drinking Soya milk. I have no idea why..

4. I have temporal lobe epilepsy, the area of the brain often associated with memory and emotion. I’m in good company with it though, Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allen Poe and Phillip K Dick all had it..

5. I tend to exist in multiple timezones. This really isnt healthy.

6. I obsessively listen to and enjoy almost all music I can get my hands on.. but I truly hate James Blunt.

7. As well as being a composer - I’m also an Architect.

8. I was born at “hometime” from school on a friday..

So now I just need to pick some other bloggers to inflict this curse upon.. hmmm..
I expect some of these have already been tagged, but here goes :

Torley,  Eshi Otawara , Patchouli Woollahra, Julynn Lilliehook, Duckyfresh, Tynan Clary, Krysss, Jujudoll Dancer

Pangaea Island Herbie Hancock Remix

Herbie Hancock is running a competition in Second Life at the moment. It offer’s the chance to remix anything from his back catalogue, with the possibility of winning some nice prizes, including Ableton Live software. The competition entry page is here although the deadline is tomorrow!

I helped out on an entry by Funk Shepherd, a friend of mine and frequent collaborator. The track features a great Second Life related rap from UK rappers Gambs11 and Deeflux.

Listen to it HERE !

There are lots of nice entries. You can check them all out here. It’s a great thing to see such a high profile artist running a competition of this nature in Second Life, recognising its potential as a creative platform.