Music performance by Von Johin, “It hurt me too” written by Elmore James

Congratulations to Second Life resident Von Johin who has just been signed on a deal with Reality Entertainment, an online media company who are concentrating on purely digital distrubution. The company has a roster that includes KC and the Sunshine band. It’s a great achievement for Von, and welcome recognition of the wealth of talent using Second Life as a virtual music platform.

One interesting question that emerges from this situation is if Reality Entertainment have signed Von Johin the avatar, or the real life person who controls him. I presume the latter ( as most Second Life musicians use their real name quite freely in promotion of their act ) however the former may actually be more interesting.

UPDATE 14 08 08 – I had an excited IM chat with Hamlet Au about this who then met up with Von and did a great piece in New World Notes. Von also tells me that Reality have indeed signed the avatar and the “RL him just pulls the strings”

Perhaps the most high profile exponent of this approach is the band Chouchou, formed from the avatars of two Second Life residents arabesque Choche and Juliet Herberle. This band exploits the creative potential of the SL platform very well creating a highly crafted aura of mystique. Whilst the band itself exists “only in Second Life”, they do have a blog and myspace page.

Music and Machinima by Chouchou

Another resident who has explored using the immersive qualities of Second Life very well is Grace McDunnough. With her ‘Musimmersion’ series of concerts she has formed a unique way of illustrating and illuminating a song, much like a 3d interactive music video.

Music by Grace McDunnough

I discussed these approaches recently on the SL5B “SL Musicians building RL careers” with Nexeus Fatale, Keiko Takamura, Hep Shepherd, Slim Warrior, Benton Wunderlich and Blondin Linden. One thing that struck me at the time was the possibility of combining the “virtual character” of a Second Life avatar persona, with the real life ‘virtual concerts’. Many people have tried this by projecting their Second Life avatars behind them in real locations. Indeed MzTere Writer ( Theresa Orlando ) recently played a cross reality gig at JenzZa Misfit’s well known Muse Isle venue, which streamed her Second Life performance out to an audience which included representatives of a major Las Vegas entertainment company.

MzTere Writer performs at Muse Isle

Photographs by JenzZa Misfit

Extend this concept into the future ( or indeed today if a major label funded it ) and we could see the potential for avatars actually performing in the physical world. This was perhaps best illustrated by the series of concerts the Gorillaz did in 2005 :

Here a developed version of the pepper’s ghost technique was used to project a “3d” image of the virtual characters ( which could just as easily be avatars ) onto the stage. Combine this train of thought with the augmented reality work which is currently going on at Georgia Tech and things become very interesting indeed.