Just went to see the Liverpool Philharmonic in Second Life. I have to say, that whilst I’m really happy to see professional orchestral music in Second Life, the experience was bizarre.
As a regular concert goer, I’m not sure if the experience of seeing an orchestra really translated into the SL concert at all. The audience was presented with a flat screen with a video of the concert on it, which was in front of a real live audience anyway. There were no avatars for the orchestra and no interaction with the SL audience what so ever.
The audio stream was poorly engineered ( peaking and distorting ) and very low bitrate. I’m told the concert was organised by “Fusion Media” Who’s website professes to explain “what is the metaverse”! – I think there’s room for improvment in their understanding of Second Life at least..
Saying that, listening through all these issues – the Liverpool Phil were great. Principal Conductor Vasily Petrenko was seemingly on form, and the pieces were good – Ravel’s Sheherazade and Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, as well as world premieres by Merseyside-born composers Kenneth Hesketh and John McCabe.
The general experience was poor though – and poorly attended even though it was exclusively invite only. As usual SLCN provided good coverage of it however ( and thanks to Starr Sonic for the backIMchat during the event !!) . To me it really demonstrated a poor understanding of the medium of virtual worlds. Showing a closed, exclusive, old media style elitism. Quite the opposite of what Second Life is about…
Make you own mind up by watching SLCN.tv’s archived footage of it
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September 15, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Wiz Nordberg
Yeah, Dizzy, the jury is out for me on the “watching avatars watching real-life video” thing. We did another similar event, the iCommons event, where Cory and some others spoke in Prague to both real-life and SL people. The majority of what SLCN does is usually 100% inworld, so now and then I like us to try the “mixed reality” stuff just to experience it and see whether it makes sense.
As far as the concert, it seemed at least a good idea for people at other sims to be able to watch. There were several times more people watching the SLCN feed than were present at the invite-only event, so I think I consider this a success from a point of view of “making sure people can see it”. But, I do wonder if this sort of thing will keep happening, or whether it is just a temporary phenomenon which will change as people become more and more inworld-savvy.
September 15, 2007 at 10:49 pm
dizzybanjo
Thanks Wiz !
Mixed reality stuff is fine by me as long as there is an interesting mix of realities !
I think the SLCN coverage and mirroring of the event across sims was great as usual
There are so many interesting things that could be done with music in virtual spaces, perhaps the mainstream concert music world just isn’t ready to embrace those concepts yet. Although composers like Michael Gordon do branch into similar territory sometimes.
September 19, 2007 at 2:01 pm
dizzybanjo
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/arts/music/18seco.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1190204723-VxZvSDPQog21yT+zBs86VA
Intresting article on this subject here ^