Avatar Orchestra Metaverse in Chicago, Berlin and Regensburg...

If you cannot see this embedded video, click here.
OFFICIAL VIDEO INFO: The Avatar Orchestra Metaverse is a pioneering New Music Ensemble in the popular virtual world, Second Life. This is a promo video from the AOM's recent concert tour in Berlin. The composition being performed for this promo is Fragula by Miulew Takahe. This video clip was recorded directly off of a screen in real life (RL) by Eifach Vacirca on behalf of the Kunstnet community. For the hi-rez movie links, go to the Kunstnet posting and to the direct download...

Here are members of the Orchestra getting ready to perform one the earliest classics from our repetoire for the SLCC in Chicago. This aforementioned composition is called WNK and was created by our German HUD builder, Bingo Onomatopoeia.

***UPDATE FROM THE NEAR FUTURE....
BINGO ONOMATOPOEIA HAS BEEN INTERVIEWED ON THE RADIO IN BERLIN ABOUT THE AVATAR ORCHESTRA METAVERSE... HE IS THE LAST SPEAKER ON THIS AUDIO EXCERPT... TO LISTEN TO HIS AUDIO INTERVIEW IN GERMAN FOR DEUTSCHLANDFUNK (A NATIONWIDE STATE-OWNED RADIO STATION), CLICK HERE...***

Hey there Contemporary Classicists, Bavarian Beermongers, and Gesamtkunstwerk Gamers,

This past weekend has been a frenzy of ear-frequency activity... The Avatar Orchestra Metaverse had officially launched their 2007 World Tour at the SLCC in Chicago and within a day had played the Kulturforum in Berlin's famous Potsdamer Platz!

Here is the official website for more information about our final event in Berlin...

Be sure to look carefully at both the official AOM and xxXtenxion blogs for info but in the meantime, check out more photos below and amuse yourself with my quasi-witty text commentary (in Italics, for tradition's sake)....

AVATAR ORCHESTRA METAVERSE's CONCERT FOR THE 3RD ANNUAL SECOND LIFE COMMUNITY CONVENTION IN CHICAGO:

Here is a close-up of some of the orchestra members (myself included) getting ready to dance to Bingo's in-world breakbeats...

Avatar Orchestra Metaverse in Leerer Beutel - Regensburg...

Here is the Orchestra at Leerer Beutel in Regensburg. The photo on the wall is showing documentation of the RL component of this festival set up by Pomodoro Bolzano and Maxxo Klaar. Klaar also curated a panel called Dresscode Avatar and a headphone festival for all the off-world Bavarians to enjoy :-) Speaking of headphones, in the furthest right-hand corner, you can see two bohemian Bavarians enjoying the live tunage with the help of virtual headphones... Oh, you have probably also been somewhat intrigued with Nnoiz Papp's new avatar. Alot of my camera angles were calculated to display his exotic form...If you more closely at Nnoiz, you will see his custom designed snake-charmer "oboe" and this large fog-horn on his back that he premiered during his performance in my composition for the 2nd set for the Regensburg crowd called SLippery SLope....You will read more about that below...

Here is another angle showing even more gratuitous profiles of myself and my classical-colleagues-in-crime...

In this picture, I was able to document the 3 Wonders of the World which official are: I - The bling bling from my shades, II - Evo Szuyuan's "pink" bunny SLippers and III - The charming visage of Nnoiz.... Oh, I must also namedrop one of our charming videographers, Angrybeth Shortbread...In a sense, she remains the fourth wonder of the weird world called the Metaverse...

In this pic you can get a better sense of how claustrophobic the performance space actually was....I guess one should not complain since I think we were actually performing in a restaurant, after all ;-) Aside from the classically connisseured crowd, you are probably also dilligently studying the pop-up window in the upper-left region which happens to be the notecard score for Miulew Takahe's composition, Rue Blanche...All Orchestra performers have to read scores just as an Orchestra in RL would... I am sure the crowd of mostly Germans appreciated our level of professionalism and efficiency ;-)I must say though, that we usually need more headroom when performing this piece...Thank goodness my SLippery SLopes were not installed here....oh, for the context behind my "Slippery SLope" composition, you will need to scroll down past this next photo below (I am ever the shameless self-promoter, eh?)...

Here is a close-up of those phone-y Bavarians....heheheheheh! Placed efficiently on the wall is the schedule of events in Regensburg.... I am guessing though that you first impression of the scheduled events was that it was for some sort of Euro-Glitch-Rave taking place in the middle of a virtualized Black Forest, right? Hmmmm... I wonder if Poli Papp depicted in this photo is actually related to Nnoiz Papp? Hmmmmm.....Poli want an Oboe?

My composition SLippery SLope (2007) was re-performed in Virtual Haidplatz/Regensburg...


Here once again we have the Orchestra lining up for a group photo in commemoration of the (approximately) 1 month anniverssary of the previous performance of my first in-world composition, "SLippery SLope" (2007) at Virtual Haidplatz... Ok, to save you and me precious blogging time/space, just click on my previous blog postings to watch the video, observe the dress rehearsal, hang out with the SLopes, the first official rehearsal, the composition's world premiere in London and the history behind this composition.... Oh, and also check out the archive of recordings located here, here, here and here... As much as I like to re-hype my own compositions, I certainly loathe having to explain it every single time...sigh! The only major differences between this performance and previous performances of this composition are threefold: 1 - I actually finished the Slippery journey first... 2 - The AOM's dedicated architect DeThomas Dibou considered making my SLopes a little more Slippery than usual but decided instead to merely re-install them at a slightly different geographical orientation.... 3 - Nnoiz Papp played his brand new snake-charming oboe and added a middle-eastern flavour to the score...I hope someone recorded and/or video-documented this performance!

Here is proof that I was the very first avatar to complete the previous two SLopes before anyone else. Some of the more lag-luster Orchestral performers accused me of cheating but I actually did not land on the ground for any considerable length of time...For the most part, I landed on the same SLope that I ascended on and since I am the composer of this piece, I do not consider this to spatial "loophole" to be a form of "cheating" ;-)

This is further evidence (nay, proof) that the actual essence of my composition is experiential and non-competitive in nature....If my composition was a form of competitive sports, you would have seen me being mugged by the rest of the Orchestra by now ;-) But seriously for a minute, this piece was composed in good spirits and was intended to be more of a subjective and participatory experience than simply a "game"....

AOM's bonus performances from the 2nd set in Virtual Haidplatz for Regensburg...

Well, because I actually came in first instead of last like last time, we managed to complete this composition ahead of schedule so we decided to play a couple of our classics from our immortal repetoire... So, once again, we played Bingo Onomatopoeia's WNK as a sort of extended encore...

Since the audience's enthusiasm was on the borderline of being overwhelmingly positive and fanatical, we just HAD to perform Miulew Takahe's visually stunning composition, Fragula.... It became rather apparent to everyone present for this performance that we needed a much more substantial RL venue to absorb the ecstacy and mania embedded into the emotional content of our compositions and fortunately, we had one such venue booked in Berlin... In a matter of minutes, we blasted a splash presentation at the RL Postdamer Platz in Berlin!

AOM's 1st set at Potsdamer Platz (Kulturforum) in Berlin...

Here we are at the Odyssey Ampitheatre peforming our 1st set for a very large RL concert in Berlin's Kulturforum (aka. somewhere in the Potsdamer Platz downtown). I have not seen the photodocumentation from the RL side of the screen but I am sure (well, I hope and have faith) that the audience attendence was at least as big as the in-world one. You are probably focusing your gaze on the 3 pop-windows mentioned 3 dance moves...yes, one of the moves says "Bored Dance" but that does not mean that I was bored while playing Bingo's "WNK" composition...On the contrary, I merely started with this template dance to make the Flashdance...er... "fastdance" (designed by the owner of Odyssey, Sugar Seville) look that much more ecstatic and luniverian...ummmm...is "Luniverian" a word?

AOM's 2nd set at Potsdamer Platz (Kulturforum) in Berlin...

After a merciful 2 hour lunch-break (dinner break for those in Berlin's local time-zone), the Orchestra reconvened to perform the oldest of our Golden Oldies - Fadheit (2006) by Maximillian Nakamura. And yes, the pop-up window is Nakamura's elegant notecard score.... As for those square buttons, click here to read what they are. Since we craved a change of scenery, we decided to perform underwater (naturally) so we could host an evening on Top of the Pops called "Drowning Amongst The Classics". In other news, the guy with the punky green hair and fashionable minimalist white suit and tie ensemble is none other than my good friend and possible future collaborator, Nyko Nakamura (no known relation to Max)...

Here we are on the verge of completing our concert in its entirety. Again, you can get a sense of the population density partaking in our audio phantasy...

...did I mention that consumers of classical music can appear quite eccentric at times? Heheheheheheheh....