Avatar Orchestra Metaverse

Avatar Orchestra Metaverse is a global collective making new music within the virtual-reality platform Second Life, an online three-dimensional program that allows users to interact through in-world avatars (users’ digital representations within a given online environment).

 

The Orchestra had its beginnings in early 2007 with the coalescence in Second Life of a group of European musicians, artists, and engineers who were trailblazing practices of networked performance made possible with rapid advances in Internet technologies and software, and with easier access to portable computers and audio gear. The group quickly attracted collaborators from Asia and North America. The Orchestra is now a group of twelve core members scattered geographically through seven countries, using Second Life as a networked meeting ground, a performance venue, and an environment for the creation of previously unimagined instruments and interactive audio-visual presentations. The Orchestra embraces an open-to-all playing field, with musicians and composers being joined by intense listeners from other disciplines (new media, visual arts, architecture, poetry, sculpture, dance), who bring new perspectives on working with sound, plus an informed approach to the visual manifestations of idea, concept, and sound.

 

Read more in the print edition.

 

Image by: Norman Lowrey