Avatar Orchestra Metaverse Live:
Breathing Cyberspace
October 21, 2020
19:00 UTC / 12 noon Pacific / 3 pm EDT / 21:00 CET
on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/468338602
Please wear headphones or use high quality external speakers for the best aural experience.
Hosted by Digital Arts Resource Centre, Ottawa Canada
for Independent Media Arts Alliance Digital Shift Victoria Canada,
and Manifestations 2020, Eindhoven, Netherlands.
While we cannot be with each other in person, the Avatar Orchestra invites you to an interlude of breathing, listening, sensing and dwelling in creative virtual space, where we have been finding unique ways to connect for 13 years ... we imagine you and breathe with you.
Breathing Cyberspace is a multi-located collective performance with dreaming spinning avatars inside telematic virtual brains, an audiovisual spectral fantasy by Tina M. Pearson, and a discussion with Avatar Orchestra members, all coming live from within the virtual environment Second Life.
“[Avatar Orchestra’s] unique performance pushes the boundaries of online interaction, the utility of [multi-user worlds] and aural perceptions of virtual environments.” --Vektor Festival, Toronto
Watch trailerPROGRAM
PERFORMERS
Miulew Takahe / Björn Eriksson, Sollefteå, Sweden
--Sound artist, improviser, composer, Deep Listening® practitioner, founding member of AOM
JORI Tokyo / Johannes Riedmann, Regensburg, Germany
--Visual and mixed media artist, performer
Maxxo Klaar / Max D. Well, Regensburg, Germany
--Concept and media artist, ‘pataphysician, scout, curator, founding member of AOM
Paco Mariani / Chris Wittkowsky, Regensburg, Germany
--Designer, concept and media artist, performer, sculptor, founding member of AOM
Gumnosophistai / Leif Inge, Oslo, Norway
--Old/new media artist
Cuirec d'Erc / Harald Muenz, Cologne, Germany
--Composer, sound artist, speech performer
Frieda Korda / Frieda Kuterna, Antwerpen, Belgium
--Media and textile artist, photographer, set designer
FredMadison / Gema FB Martín, Madrid, Spain
--Multidisciplinary artist, psychologist (Technoethics), scientific researcher
Zonzo Spyker / Viv Corringham, New York, USA/ London, UK
--Vocalist and sound artist, Deep Listening® practitioner
North Zipper / Norman Lowrey, Kingston, NY, USA
--Composer, mask maker, performance / video artist, Professor Emeritus of Music at Drew University, Deep Listening® practitioner
Humming Pera / Tina M. Pearson, Victoria, BC, Canada
--Composer, sound artist, improviser, facilitator, Deep Listening® practitioner
PROGRAM NOTES
Avatar Orchestra Metaverse is a global collective of multi-disciplined artists. They meet remotely in a networked multi-user world, where, together as avatars, they imagine, build and play new cyberworld audiovisual instruments while experimenting with identity, perception, telepathy and collectivity. Their HUD instruments determine movement, audio emissions, and the release of particles and textures that give visual indications of sounds made independently by individual players in real time. Their performances, without input streaming, are created completely within the networked 3-D environment world Second Life, which the artists consider an instrument to explore and push as well as a venue. Since 2007, they have developed and embraced a sustained collective telematic evolution that informs their listening, creation, and performance skills, as their brains and bodies reorient and adapt in deep drift inside digital and networked technologies.
Breathing PwRHm by Tina M Pearson is a development of a work commissioned by the Deep Listening® Foundation in 2008. It explores two facets of multi-user 3D environments: presence and intimacy between visceral, virtual and telepathic worlds; and the electric hum – the voice of the power grids that make it possible for us to connect in this way. Sonically, it explores the relationship of the Alternating Current (AC) of the North American (60 Hz) and European/Asian (50 Hz) electric systems through two sets of tones representing the harmonic series of the two ACs, and modified sound samples of electric motors and generators from each continent. The result is a soundworld of just-intonation harmonies, beat frequencies, and microtone textures as the two systems meet. In performance, the remotely located performers’ individual breath rhythms determine the timing and pacing of tones they play; the Europeans’ cue is their exhale, the North Americans’ cue is their inhale. This breathcentred performance practice simultaneously focuses and extends the players’ attention while providing temporal structure and pacing for the piece. Globes held by the avatars are 'receivers' that emit differently coloured particles according to their particular AC instrument, and the pitch and volume of the specific sounds they each play in real time. Avatar animations, choreography, real time conducting, and the telematic symbiosis of the globally dispersed players create a kind of surreal entrainment inside the wired worlds that power our connectivity.
