The New York Times Arts Section has an interesting article about the challenges of transporting classical music into the virtual world. Entitled "Watching a Cyber Audience Watch a Real Orchestra Perform in a Virtual World," the impetus was the the concert by the Liverpool Royal Philharmonic in SL last week.
I was lucky enough to be there, along with 50-some other avatars, and I think it was a pretty successful experiment. I’m no judge of classical music, but the audience certainly seemed to be thrilled by the performances.
The organizers wisely chose to have both a video and an audio stream, which I found helpful since the video was horribly choppy and lagged. They perhaps too accurately tried to replicate the philharmonic concert hall, with too many seats making the space look empty even though it was quite full by SL standards. Some more precise texture work might have made it a bit more immersive. But all in all, an excellent effort.
I even made it into the article, sorta. That’s a description of my avatar in the first sentence. Famous!
Wooo! I’m in the picture!
It was an interesting event, for sure, though it was pretty annoying at the beginning when there was repeated shouting to corral the crowd into proper ‘symphony hall’ behavior.
Yes, I was thrilled. I’m an eclectic audiophile and it was a great performance. Funny they didn’t mention Philip too; his Rolling Stones shirt was a statement as well. 🙂