5 Questions to 5 Metaverse Rockers

Friday night, I was meeting with Dizzy Banjo, Doubledown Tandino, Grace McDunnough, Poid Mahovlich and Slim Warrior, who will be part of Rocking the Metaverse. This never-seen-before music tour will gather five of the foremost musicians of Second Life and take them over four venues: Second Life (in our auditorium), ReactionGrid on OpenSim, Twinity and Metaplace.

I had planned to ask them about the present and future of music in virtual worlds, but due to my sheer noobyness at conducting interviews, most of it was done over email. During our time together though, we experimented chatting in dual reality mode, since we all logged on to Metaplace while talking via voice in Second Life.

The first concert of the Rocking the Metaverse tour will take place tomorrow, 19 May at 1pm SLT, on Orange Island.

EDIT: here is the lineup. Unfortunately, Jax won’t be able to make it to the SL date. Hope to see him in the next world!

1:00pm-1:30 pm – Dizzy banjo
1:30pm-2:30pm – Grace McDunnough
2:30pm-3:30pm – Slim Warrior
3:30pm-4:00pm – Doubledown Tandino

Real Virtualities will be streaming the gigs for those of you who can’t make it to Second Life (please note the new Livestream.com URL). So you have no excuse to miss this historic event!

Read the interview after the jump.

Dizzy Banjo (Robert Thomas) is a composer as well as a performing artist from London. He talks about music, virtual worlds and all the experiments you can have with them on his blog.
Grace McDunnough is a renowned musician on Second Life, and she also designs virtual experiences. You can read (and hear) more about her on her website.
Jax Streeter wasn’t booked when we met, so he’s not part of the interview. But you can listen to his music on his site.
Doubledown Tandino (Brad Reason) is a well known SL and RL performer from Florida. He blogs about the web and social media, and we recommend you listen to his music.
Slim Warrior (SlimGirlFat) is the first UK musician to perform live on Second Life. Her Myspace is full of musical goodness.
Poid Mahovlich is one of the most experienced SL photographers. Perhaps because she’s also a on in RL. View her galleries on Flickr and Koinup or read her blog.
Koinup Editor (Pierluigi Casolari) is the co-founder of koinup.com, the main ressource for virtual world art. He’s the main organiser of Rocking the Metaverse. He couldn’t make it to the meetup, but he was kind enough to answer my questions.

So where does the idea of a live tour in several virtual worlds come from? How did each of you get involved in this event?

Koinup: One of the goals of Koinup since the launch of the website has been the promotion of the virtual world/metaverse culture. Koinup is bringing the culture, the creativity and the sociality of virtual worlds to a new level. We think that metaverses are incredible stages for creativity. Recently Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linden Lab said that Music is a killer app for virtual worlds. Rocking the Metaverse goal is to drive awareness on the potential of virtual worlds as stages for music and musicians.

Doubledown: The concept of the multi-metaverse music tour has been on the lips of several Second Life performers and event producers, especially just as open grids began forming. Pier from Koinup [aka Koinup Editor] specifically was the one that brought the concept into fruition. Immediately, he had the solid support falling into place.

Poid: I was asked by koinup to be part of the team as a photographer to document the forthcoming events in the various virtual worlds.

Slim: I was approached by Doubledown for this particular event, although I have performed in more than one virtual world at once, (OpenLife and Legend City and SL).

Dizzy: Erm – I’m not sure about the origins of this event actually. I’ve been tied up in a new project recently which is taking a huge amount of my time, so staying on top of everything has become a bit difficult for me. I would say though that the concept of virtual tours around different worlds, for music as well as other types of events has probably been brewing for some time.

Grace: I performed my first multi-world gig in Second Life and Metaplace this March and I had a simply amazing time. I normally get an adrenaline rush when I perform, but this was more like a tidal wave, and I was hooked.

Do any of you define yourselves as a ‘virtual artist’, or do you consider your RL work as equally important, if not more?

Slim: I am a virtual musician in the sense that I have never performed a Live Gig in front of a real life audience, only through the internet using SL or other virtual platforms. I don’t consider my music as totally virtual though; that’s something that is very much RL with the virtual platform being another marketing tool for me.

Poid: Yes by definition I am a Virtual Artist, I see no difference as to what I do in Second Life or in my First Life – I actively create in both, with half my time being dedicated to each.

Doubledown: I define myself as both, or either/or. I have been a RL performer. I can always be a RL performer. But when I’m performing inworld, I consider myself a virtual performer with a RL and SL music & event background. In RL, I’m primarily a DJ or promoter. In the metaverse, I am a live musician and DJ, an event producer, plus a social networker, developer, consultant, builder, and more. To me, the In-world metaverse is where I am accomplishing my goals, and I am proud to always consider myself a virtual artist. Because after all… “virtual world metaverse artist” sounds cooler than “artist”.

Grace: The musician inside of me came alive because of Second Life, otherwise I’m sure it would still be quite dormant. For a person like me, Second Life is akin to the Holy Grail; it’s the ultimate creative high. In RL I am plagued by a bad case of stage fright which has to date kept me from “breaking out”. However, I am determined to help people recognize that being a virtual artist (as you put it) is valid and creatively engaging work. I think in the future it may redefine what “being a musician” means. I’ve already had offers to play “in the real world” based solely on my virtual presence, so I know it’s possible to cross over. But the question really is… why would I trade easy access to a creatively dynamic and burgeoning global platform and meaningful relationships with fans/listeners for long bus rides, strangers, smoky bars and bad beer?

Dizzy: I don’t distinguish between RL and virtual worlds at all. To me virtual worlds are a part of reality, just as important. I have always been a composer really I think, but started doing it professionally about 8 years ago. Doing composition work in Second Life (as well as some performances) is just part of my work as a composer really.

As I discovered tonight, some of you are active on Metaplace as well as Second Life. Do you perform there? Any other virtual worlds you’re frequenting?

Dizzy: I generally try all the big virtual worlds as they emerge into alpha / early beta stage. So I’m in most of them. I’m not so much of a performer really though. I’m far more interested in sonic environments, creating 3d musical spaces which people can interact in and create reactive music together. So far I have only really done this in Second Life, and fiddled about a bit as a Google Lively trusted content developer. Metaplace looks very interesting from that point of view, and the Opensim based worlds, especially those related to the great work Realxtend are doing, look really interesting. However for me at the moment there are some other projects which are taking up so much of my time that I doubt I will be able to explore creating sonic environments in those worlds for a while.

Slim: I have now joined Metaplace and am addicted! Hehe it’s great fun. Others I have used are OpenSim, Open Life, LegendCity. I just joined ReactionGrid too.

Poid: I recently created two VW’s in Metaplace, I do hang out in other VWs, I also just started dev in Blue Mars.

Grace: Right now I’m just performing in SL and Metaplace but I’m looking forward to branching out into more spaces, provided there are ways to meaningfully connect to the audience. I’ve been frequenting virtual worlds for a while now – there are a few shots from my travels on my Flickr.

Doubledown: I am only in Second Life right now… So each of these worlds I will be learning a week prior to the show, and then leaping in with both pixelated feet.

Social networks have crept into our geek lives to the point of ubiquity. And this goes for music as well. If virtual worlds are the future of the social web, what do you think music creation and consumption will be like in 2 to 5 years? Could virtual worlds play their part in a new music distribution system?

Grace: I think virtual worlds could fundamentally change the way people interact with music and musicians. Last week I performed for 40+ people from Catalonia. I’m embarrased to admit that I had never even heard of Catalonia before that gig! How else could I as a musician affordably reach a global audience and get feedback in real time… in Catalan? Most of my originals are collaborations with people I’ve only met in Second Life. My first single was mixed in the UK by someone I’ve never met. Where else could I meet musicians, song writers and producers from other places, cultures and genres and collaborate in person? Where else can you combine truly immersive visual and audio experiences in ways that you cannot achieve in the real world? How else would I be able to produce Musimmersion, for example? We’ve only scratched the surface of musical creativity that virtual worlds afford us – it’s going to be a fantastic ride!

Slim: I think virtual worlds will play an important part of music distribution certainly as an immersive experience and also as a marketing tool. Social networking is vital to a musician/band; it helps to spread the word and enable more fans to hear music they want to hear and buy after having experienced a ‘Live’ concert, etc.

Doubledown: This bold new step we are about to embark on… rocking the metaverse on crossworld platforms…. all of this… It’s going to be common everyday in 2-5 years. Music and music sharing will not be stopped, technology will advance, and people will use a metaverse just as they would the internet now. Currently, I get to perform my music via the net to people around the world. Those people listening now, in 2009, are “in-the-know”. A few years from now, going in-world and popping into a musician or DJ’s live concert will be a common thought amongst the mainstream. “Do we want to go out to the movies?… Nah, Lets log on and see what shows are playing in-world.” “Do we want to go to the club? Nah.. I’m kind of tired tonight but we can get the same music right in my living room.” A few years from now, music, live music shows, and 3D-related real-time group content is going to be normal and a regular common thing.

Poid: I predict that it will be a seamless cross over when a performing artist can take part by plugging into the networks via a gateway portal which allows you to play/perform in many virtual worlds simultaneously. This could be via your computer or a specifically developed music event tool. Regarding distribution, a performer and his works could go viral very fast – given the possibility of performing to large audiences with relative ease and at a low cost across the globe via virtual worlds.

Dizzy: They [social networks] have crept into everyone’s life now, not just the geeks! This idea of virtual worlds being part of a distribution system is fascinating and is something I will be talking about at Metameets next week in Amsterdam. I think the role of virtual worlds will be far more influential on music than just affecting distribution. I think it will affect the entire process, from inspiration, through composition, recording, performance and revenue models. Virtual worlds are particularly interesting as they are so socially inclusive. I think music in general will become more socially inclusive and encourage people to be part of the control/playback and even generation of music with the artist. This will allow artists to be far more flexible in the way they allow people to consume their music, but also creates interesting compositional challenges. In many ways this is returning music to a much more ephemeral state, far more similar to the way folk music moves around, never the same twice. The most exciting thing for me, is not how all this will change the music industry (and I think it already is), but how it will change music itself and create new forms of music we haven’t heard before. For more on this, tune in to the in-world stream of my talk from Metameets in Second Life when its on – I’ll be announcing where on my Twitter.

The Rocking the Metaverse tour aims at supporting the music culture in virtual worlds. Koinup’s press release says they offer musicians a new stage to promote their work. Do any of you think VWs will play a part in an artist’s carreer in the future, as for example MySpace and Flickr do now?

Doubledown: My career is my career now because of Second Life. If there was never a second life invented, I would be performing in real life. Because I love Second Life so much, I made virtual worlds and social networking on the internet my career. Sure, I could always perform any time in real life, but I’m doing so much creative stuff in SL, I don’t want to ever leave it. My career (the past 2 years) has been live music and creative events in SL.

Poid: Yes, I do see the possibility for this, most definitely. If the tech is updated, and the various virtual world platforms are stable enough to sustain, I do believe this is possibly a new way to develop a music industry.

Grace: Absolutely, unequivocally… and I’m counting on it. :)

Dizzy: I think virtual worlds already are, but they dont access mainstream audiences and currently dont have the capacity to reach huge numbers of people in the way Myspace did. However, this can be seen as a blessing – when Myspace became that big, it was flooded by millions of artists – most of which were very poor quality and it watered down the pool of talent, so it was very difficult to find quality. Virtual worlds at the moment dont have that problem; it’s easy to find the best musicians in Second Life for instance, as the level of choice isn’t ridiculously high and the word of mouth network about performers is very strong. The downside of that is smaller audience numbers and reach to prospective listeners. I think other virtual worlds – for instance Blue Mars, will soon have significantly higher possible concurrencies within regions, which will radically shift that equation. It will be interesting to see what happens to music there.

Slim: Yes, having a new platform for performers to showcase their music in a fun and immersive environment can only be good. Promotion comes on all levels and what better than world of mouth by another fan who has been to your concert. Even though they may live thousands of miles away!

Koinup: I think that virtual worlds could really play a role in the future of several disciplines. Today it has been accepted that virtual worlds killer apps are roleplaying and educational games. I think that along with these two important areas, we should also look at the art creativity (photo, architecture, machinima) and music performances. The mission of Rocking the Metaverse is to show that virtual worlds allow not only to stream live music buy also offer a new way to perform live and to get in touch with the audience. As such, they are incredible tools for musicians. They make web music more alive, more approachable and more interactive.

May 18, 2009 at 4:27 pm | Uncategorized | 1 comment

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