Saturday, February 16, 2008

En Route to Upgrade Paris...

It did not take me long to get dressed for the occasion: Dr. Seuss hat, Senegalese flag-abstraction jacket and French flag-abstraction pants....I was good to go and was looking forward to meeting up with some other Second Front-ers, the curators and Gawlab from Dakar (Senegal) who were giving an artist talk before us.

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM...that Banana Dacquiri was yummy! I felt like drinking one at my PR Office a few minutes before meeting the rest of the Second Front crew for our artist talk at Upgrade Paris. I needed a stiff drink as I wanted to feel more relaxed and tropical - Senegal is a pleasant and well-weathered French colony, right? ;-)

But, all was not as it seemed as I found out a little bit later...

To read more about today's artist talk, please go to the Second Front blog posting about it here....

Second Wall-ker and the AOM on ZKM Island...

Here I am wearing my wall in front of my PR office. Yes, that is a portrait of Phil Spector that I have decided to hang on my wall...Separated at birth, you ask? Yes, quite possibly so :-)

Hey there Wirxli loving Wallflowers, Bloated Berliners and ZKM-o-philes!

Phew! What a week! Well, what a LAST week, that is! Last week, I had 2 gigs on one day. The pic above gives you a sneak peek into my new performance with Second Front called "Second Wall-ker Center - Dancing About Architecture"....Please check out our official blog and read all about it here. Basically, it was hosted by the Director's Lounge in Berlin and the ZKM as part of the Berlinale festival.

Normally, I would summarize what happened on this blog too but I am just too SLeepy to do any more writing...I have literally just posted the Second Front blog posting a few minutes ago... I now have a full time office job in RL and so I only have weekends to practice art in SL these days. Geez, I only have like 16 hours from now before I have to appear again for Upgrade Paris....yikes!

I have barely recovered from my Valentine's Day festivities and already it is back to virtual work....sigh!

Ok, so before Second Front's performance, I also performed yet again with the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse and yes, we performed the classics as usual but this time we performed on the exciting and high-profile ZKM Island...here are a couple of pix from this event...

AVATAR ORCHESTRA METAVERSE ON ZKM ISLAND...

Here we all are on a packed oil rig playing Miulew Takahe's classic composition, Rue Blanche.


Here is a close-up of me playing Takahe's other classic called Fragula inside a special Tron-inspired mountain located on ZKM Island. We would play Fragula inside the mountain and we would suddently leap outside the box...er...mountain...er...grid...er...whatever...ummm...I think I need to SLeep in RL now....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

p.s. I did not take a pic of Bingo Onomatopoeia's WNK performance because the space was so laggy at the time, I could barely even hear my own sounds in realtime let alone take any photos without crashing the world...sigh!

Friday, February 01, 2008

Happy Belated New Year!

As I am still technically in rehab, I am not really allowed to indulge in the real "bubbly". To celebrate Belated New Years Day, I have decided to spend some time inside a bubble instead...In this case, it is the sonically enhanced bubble vehicle belonging to my Orchestral colleague, Goodwind Seiling.

Hey there Post-Party Poopers, Belated Bubbles and Rehab Addicts!

HAPPY BELATED NEW YEAR!

Yaaay! It is Feb 1st and I am exactly one month behind schedule! I guess this would officially make it a Belated New Year worth celebrating, eh?

Sadly, the last time I posted on my blog was technically last year...Is anyone counting? SIGH!

The end of 2007 was a major burn-out for me because of all the SL Coke I was doing...it kinda got to my head and I am sure the entire Second Front group also went a little snowblind since our most recent debaucherous fiasco in Miami was a dayglo green blizzard out of nowhere!

Anyway, I have been spending the first part of this year in Rehab which is probably a good thing since I have an upcoming full time job in RL. This job will be 9-5 PM from Monday-Friday so I probably will not be active in SL nor on my blog until the weekends....

However, I have not totally faded from the scene. I consider 2008 to be the year of being "Born Again" although in my case, that does not really mean all that much...heheheheh....

I still have some life left in me in the form of:

1) A top-secret performance with Blued Food at an undisclosed location (I cannot show you the rehearsal documentation until later).

2) Feb 10th - Upcoming Second Front and Avatar Orchestra Metaverse performances curated by Olga Wunderlich will be taking place on the ZKM Island that is part of the Director's Lounge in Berlin.

3) Feb 16th - A talk with Second Front following a bunch of Senegalese artists and theorists as part of Upgrade Paris. This event will be organized by Toto Donat.

4) May 10th - My new composition called "XANADRuuL: Stockhausen's Pleasuredome 4 Sirius Business" (2008) will be premiered at the Open Space's Voice festival. This 3rd musical opus of mine will be performed by the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse accompanied by additional choir members and will be curated by Humming Pera (Tina Pearson).

5) A whole slew of top-secret collaborations in SL and the World of Warcraft which I am not at liberty to disclose yet.

Well, enough about the future...here are some more photos from the blast from the slightly earlier past...well, earlier today anyway... All these photos were taken from my Orchestral colleague Goodwind Seiling's (Sachiko Hayashi's) installation at the HUMlab in Sweden... Basically, you enter a floating bubble vehicle and ram into the various spokes inside the geodesic dome...the experience is kinda like musical bumper cars except one might guess that Eno was the engineering guide rather than some demented fair-ride operator.

Ok..here they are...

Here is a zoomed-out pic showing the entire geodesic dome... If you look closer, you can see me inside the dome (and inside a bubble as well)...It seems that the "dome" is a common architectural theme for Orchestra members these days since I will also be using a custom geodesic dome for my upcoming Stockhausen tribute piece for mixed Orchestra and Choir called "XANADRuuL: Stockhausen's Pleasuredome 4 Sirius Business".


Here is proof that I actually attended Goodwind Seiling's show at the HUMlab. Although this was the first image I documented, I am posting it as if it was a closing image as I am treating it like end-credits....hee hee!