Pauline Oliveros in Second Life!

This is probably the first ever photo-document of Pauline Oliveros (Free Noyes) in Second Life unless of course, Miulew Takahe took a quickie snapshot first...sigh! For this pic, I literally just gave Pauline my Rue Blanche gear (including the backpack) so Miulew could guide Pauline through the process of testing out the orchestra's inflatable backpack. For the record, Miulew got a compliment from Pauline about his zany SLippers! She must have been envious of these SLippers because she was definitely acting like a classic shoegazer with all the times she was bending down to check out her own plain-jane pair ;-)

Hey there 20th century and contemporary classical new music legends and musicworking mythmakers!

I know I promised in my last blog posting that I was taking a mini blog-break for the rest of September in order to focus on composing my new orchestral piece called Riesenrad but I could not help myself because due to recent developments, there was just a little bit more to blog...

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of giving the electronic music pioneer Pauline Oliveros (Free Noyes in SL) a tour of the hip art scene on Odyssey Island and also with the help of Miulew Takahe, a demonstration of the performance gear we use in our Avatar Orchestra Metaverse group. It is our hope that Pauline/Free takes up our offer to join the Orchestra and maybe even compose a new piece for the ensemble!

Well, no promises yet since Pauline had some server problems and was unable to hear the HUD-generated sounds properly. I am guessing this is because Second Life's active-user population has actually (not just virtually) doubled in the past couple of weeks alone! When the sounds were playing fine, the metaverse averaged about 20,000 simultaneous avatars and now it is pushing the envelope beyond the 40,000 mark!

Well, I am hoping Pauline/Free returns again to give Second Life a Second Chance.

At the very least, I managed to invite some friends over to take a few more snapshots of with her to celebrate her in-world debut...

A few minutes later, my friend Bibbe Oh dropped by to say hello. This was at the point that we were trying to impress Pauline (Free) with our sensuous sine tones but for some reason, those sine bits never seemed to transmit that afternoon...sigh!

For awhile, we thought that maybe the lack of transmitted sound had to do with the lagginess of the room so we moved to a more open area known us locals as Virtual Haidplatz. Sugar Seville, the curator of Odyssey Island, joined us there to also say hello and to try and help us figure out the situation that was blocking us from giving a flawless demo of our orchestral instrument(s). Unfortunately, the sound situation did not improve...sigh!

Eventually, we simply gave up on the whole sound check idea and decided to give Pauline a quick tour of some other landmarks on Odyssey Island such as....of course, my own PR office! ;-) Since I was in full-throttle PR mode, I invited my glamorous German art-blogger friend Olga Wunderlich to drop by since she happened to be in-world at the time. My glass of red-wine started to get a bit cold (maybe I am just cold-blooded or something) so I warmed it up by standing in the middle of my fire which by the way, is still successfully burning a bunch of negative reviews written by disgruntled and jaded critics....heheheheh! Oh, I forgot to mention that I am proud of this pic because I think I successfully captured the stylish aloofness that is second-nature to all those involved in the SL art world ;-)

I guess it was just a matter of time before we had to show Pauline the blight (not a typo, I really mean "blight" and not "bright") side of life on Odyssey Island. I think the fact that Ian Ah sleeps in a squat directly underneath my PR office is proof that virtual worlds are not always the Utopias they pretend to be. Yes my friends, there is a digital divide in Second Life and it is deepening...er...widening ;-)

I hope you like this photo. I managed to get everyone to line up for an official group shot in front of the main gallery on Odyssey Island called Exhibit A. By the way, I have a solo show there next month..stay tuned!

...and here is one additional angle of us doing one more group pose before saying our mutual farewells....