Images from Vancouver Calling, Improvising across platforms

The Avatar Orchestra Metaverse performed in a networked composition by Pauline Oliveros during her presentation, via Skype, at the Canadian New Music Network Forum 2012 in Vancouver, January 22.

Randy Raine-Reusch introducing Pauline and AOM

The composition was performed after Pauline's presentation of the Deep Listening Institute's Adaptive Use Musical Instruments (AUMI) program, demonstrated by Jackie Heyen, also via Skype.

After the demonstration, musicians attending the Forum were invited to participate in the piece. Some were instructed how to play with the three AUMI programs installed on iMac computers in front of the stage.

Others were provided monitors that gave a view of two groups of AOM performers in Second Life and given information about the virtual instruments and visual representations of sound.

Pauline gave the performance instructions for Vancouver Calling to all the live players - musicians in Vancouver on acoustic instruments, AUMI players in Vancouver, Jackie playing AUMI via Skype in New York, and the Avatar Orchestra in Second Life. See the score here.

And then the global multi-platform telematic performance.

Vancouver Calling - AOM and Pauline Oliveros

The Avatar Orchestra Metaverse will make an appearance at the Canadian New Music Network Forum 2012 - Connecting Practices, Geographies and Cultures. The Forum takes place in Vancouver, BC, Canada January 19-22, 2012.


Reflecting the times and the rapid evolution of the practice and dissemination of new music, Forum 2012 brings together some of the most innovative thinkers in North America to discuss what is ahead for the art form and its networks.

From the Forum 2012 brochure:

"While music practitioners are redefining their roles within their home communities through intercultural collaborations and partnerships with education, environment, social, health and other groups, networked platforms have opened pathways for collaboration and dissemination in a globally interconnected context. Emerging technologies are transforming the way music is conceived, composed and performed through radical new instruments, interfaces and robotic intelligences.


New music is stepping more and more beyond conventional concert venues to inhabit an array of contexts and places that stretch both the music and the experience. Similarly, a blur between composer and performer and between audience and practitioner is evolving the art form as philosophical ideas and interactive methodologies become integrated into the practice of new music.


In the midst of these deep and far-reaching developments, at the core of Forum 2012 is a reminder and a recognition that the heart of any musical practice, whether ancient, modern or radically new, is about connecting — with sound, with place and with each other."

AOM will fit right in!

For this occasion, American composer and long-time AOM member Pauline Oliveros has composed a mixed reality composition, Vancouver Calling, for AOM, the Adaptive Use Musical Instruments system and onsite improvisors.

Stay tuned ...