As official documenter/machinimatographer for the SkyDancers I was lucky to have been at the dress rehearsal and premier of this groundbreaking new show by DanCoyote’s troupe and created this trailer to help get those virtual bums on seats.

You can download a 15MB medium rez MP4 here. It was fantastic to experience this next generation performance and witness a new layer, a narrative across the three musical movements in addition to what has been visually more abstract in the past. Other exciting elements included the movement by the dancers around the volumous space triggering elements of the soundscape and the long prim cascades they are wearing integrating seamlessly with the more static set elements. A show well worth going to (if you can get tickets) and yes, I know, my little trailer and previous well received captures of the shows only gets half way there in terms of capturing the essence (see bottom of post)…but you who are not in this world are watching/reading this

75 still photos on flickr here. Here is the official blurb

New Media Consortium (NMC) proudly presents:
DanCoyote’s ZeroG SkyDancers Third Production:
“Second Spring”.

Second Spring is a completely LIVE story performance. SkyDancers perform in-flight choreography without the benefit of animations or gestures of any kind following cues given in REAL TIME on a private IM channel. DanCoyote “calls” the show to keep time with the score written and performed by ZeroOne Paz.

DanCoyote and Technical Director ZenMondo Wormser have pulled out all the stops this time and created the most dynamic stage set ever. Set pieces will evolve, vanish and change position as the story plays out.

Production Designer Queue Marlowe has created an incredible array of SkyDancer costumes called “cascades” that are change many times over the hour long show.

Set pieces have been created by venerable Second Life artists Jopsy Pendragon and Nand Nerd. Expect the unexpected!

To be our guest at this performance please send a message to DanCoyote Antonelli. DanCoyote will invite you to join the tickets group. Seating is very limited so only members of the tickets group will be admitted to the performance space.

Please contribute generously to the donation kiosk. A production of this quality and depth takes many hundreds of hours to prepare as well as tens of thousands of Linden dollars to produce. Suggested donation is $3000 Lindens with a sliding scale from $1000 up.

Cheers!

DanCoyote Antonelli, Producer Director, ZeroG SkyDancers

=========Press Release=========
For Immediate Release

New Media Consortium Presents
ZeroG SkyDancers III - Virtual Flight Choreography

Pioneering Performing Arts Soar in the Metaverse - Again - Under the Direction of DanCoyote Antonelli

January 1, 2008, (Second Life) - Avatar DanCoyote Antonelli is accustomed to breaking new ground. Even in virtual worlds he is considered avant guarde. The real man controlling that avatar, DC Spensley, has been wowing virtual audiences since 2006 with art installations that would not be possible in real life, but perhaps the most coveted ticket in all of Second Life is one to a performance by his ZeroG SkyDancers. On January 6, 2008, the premiere of the highly anticipated, third, completely redesigned production of ZeroG SkyDancers will debut.

Second Life’s history making, critically acclaimed world performance group, the ZeroG SkyDancers is a new form of ensemble performance that uses the airspace of this virtual world, resulting in a cross between water ballet and aerial acrobatics, in ways that would not be possible in the physical world. Wearing spectacular, flowing costumes called cascades - that are many times larger than their avatars - the SkyDancers move through space, and become part of the stage themselves. Altering and evolving, their flight triggers audio samples, which provide a unique layer to the original musical score commissioned for the production.††

The production, sponsored by the New Media Consortium (NMC), will introduce an all-new reactive-interactive stage set that is repeatedly and dramatically transformed over the hour long performance. The ZeroG SkyDancers III will formally debut at 9PM Pacific Standard Time, Sunday, January 6, 2008 in the virtual world of Second Life. Seating is limited, but the show will run every week during the first 90 days of 2008, to accommodate the most guests possible. Tickets will cost $10 US ($3000 Lindens) a piece. For ticket information, please contact Spensley directly at dc@spensley.com.

Those with tickets will need to complete a 5 minute registration process with Second Life, http://www.secondlife.com , in order to access the ZeroG SkyDancers III performance.† A basic account is absolutely free, includes unlimited access to Second Life’s tools, events and communities.†Spensley recommends that audience members spend a minimum of 15 minutes learning the basic skills of the Second Life world prior to attending the performance. “Familiarizing yourself with basic navigation of Second Life will add even more enjoyment to the show,” said Spensley.

Gary Hazlitt’s video’s of two previous ZeroG SkyDancers II performances are available at YouTube and have received nearly 15 thousand views. “It’s difficult to convey the dramatic and immersive effects of the Second Life virtual world in a 2-D web environment, however the videos do convey the overall concept of the performance,” said Spensley.

Categories: Creative Collaboration, Dance, Digital Art, Environments, Events, Exhibition, Experimental, Identity, Machinima, Music, Music Experiments, Performance, Second Life, SkyDancers, Sound Design, Spiritual, Virtual Worlds
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I was lucky to be contacted by my friend DanCoyote Antonelli to go along to the last two performances of his invigorated ZeroG SkyDancers as part of Second Life’s 4th birthday celebrations. After my popular one take video film and article “The Organic Beauty of Hyperformalism” from last year I had a much deeper understanding of the group’s vision and this time, 6 months later, captured what I believe to be film that ‘really’ gets under the surface of these wonderous experiences - but thats just my opinion. I edited the film out of order from the original performance to hopefully enhance the structure of the piece, to make it build and grow and look forward to DanCoyote’s take on it. It is very hard to put these immersive surround experiences into a 2D linear environment - but I am getting better and about two and a half minutes in things start to happen!

The ZeroG dancing troupe are now a year old and it showed with much greater synchronicity between the the music, the voluptuous large scale hyperformalist moving art and the flying dancers - the flyers particularly demonstrated amazing feats of acrobatics and sublime balletic motion than in previous performances. Anyway the video goes some way to capturing the “oh you really had to be there” statements, while I was filming this and travelling along through the air with the dancers at high resolution, it really felt like I had a privileged glimpse throught the matrix to the next level, I was ‘dancing with angels’.

Credits approved by DanCoyote from the video.

ZeroG SkyDancers Spring 2007 Production June 29th 2007 at Ars Simulacra, NMC Art Showcase in honor of the Second Life Fourth Birthday Celebration and the ZeroG SkyDancers 1st year anniversary.

Created by DC Spensley

Produced and Directed by DanCoyote Antonelli

Machinamatography and Editing by Gary Hazlitt

Original Score ZeroOne Paz

SkyDancers:

Assistant Director Anhinga Chaika

Assistant Producer Callypian Christianson, Deborah Stranglove

Prima Tatiana Kurri, Angelique Menoptra, Lina Lageos, Kensai Uriza

House Manager Onyx Bijoux

Technical Director ZenMondo Wormser

Costume Designer Sabine Stonebender

Posted by Gary Hazlitt from inside Second Life

Categories: Creative Collaboration, Digital Art, Events, Friends, Machinima, Music Experiments, Performance, Virtual Worlds
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Second Life Gary’s Sim Marni 10, originally uploaded by Gary Hayes.

I have been so busy since October last year that I have completely forgotten to mention the island I bought. I did the sums and it actually worked out way cheaper for me to buy and island and divide it into four with three other friends. So Marni was born. Marni is an aboriginal word meaning welcome.

I terraformed the island with a large central and shared mountain space with 80m waterfalls with rivers and smaller hills separating the four quadrants. It is a very tranquil area and the images here are some building designs I did over 6 months ago! I hope to get time to finish some of them and add some more architecture in the ‘Sci-Fi Persian’ style.

The other three folk on the island are a wonderful immersive sound sculpture artist, a designer with his own company and an SL entrepreneur. I am sure they won’t mind you looking around.

Please pop along and have a look around. I am unlikely to be there most of the time, but you never know. In any event you are very Marni (Welcome). Heres the SLURL

Posted by Gary Hazlitt from Inside Second Life

Categories: Architecture, Building, Environment Design, Environments, Music, Music Experiments, Neighbourhood, Residential, Second Life, Sent In-World, Travel, Virtual Tourism, Virtual Worlds
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It was a quiet New Years Day evening here on Marni and the frame rate of the world was very high, so I set myself the goal to create another film in less than five hours. To go alongside one of my favourite bio songs, Windmills of Your Mind, which has wonderfully evocative narrative and imagery. The song was sung in one take and I did the arrangement a couple of days earlier. The film was also a chance to try out some very experimental camera work, before unseen, which was great fun.

Kylie Wollongong, a close friend, was around in the early hours to play a key walk-on ‘break’ up role and I got permission from some fabulous SL artists, Clames Clanger and my two neighbours from the previous post, to use some of their creations to ‘revolve’ with. I also ventured around SL to find some Windmills but other than that it was all filmed around Marni as well as high up in the stars.

There are two embedded versions on the site here (Google first and YouTube below - you choose) but I would recommend you download a higer quality version (and stereo sound!) I have set up - 45MB WMV but worth it, click here to download it. The video makes a nice partner to the one from XMas day, although that one suffered from serious but unavoidable frame rate issues. That one is also available as better quality download, a 54MB Mp4 here.

Credits:

• Filmed and produced in Second Life by Gary Hazlitt
• Song “Windmills of Your Mind” Lyric: Marilyn & Alan Bergman, Music: Michel Legrand, Arr: Gary Hazlitt
• Special thanks to Second Life Artists: Space Spinners: Clames Clanger. Sound Sculptures: Adam Ramona and Mashup Islander.
• Edited by Gary Hazlitt

Posted by Gary Hazlitt © 2007 from inside Second Life

Categories: Creative Collaboration, Digital Art, Experimental, Machinima, Music, Music Experiments, Second Life, Songs, Virtual Worlds
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Had a wonderful experience on Tuesday teaching eight students on the island I built and manage, AFTRS Esperance (slurl). They were here to learn how to approach professionally designing sound for games and worlds like this ours. From my perspective they appeared early in the day and I took trained them for five hours in the basics of communication, moving around our world, building, general management of one’s assets but most time was spent on intermediate sound design. I was stunned how quickly new students nowadays pick things up so quickly as I took them further through the scripting for our amazing world. From relative babies of this world after five hours they were flying, dancing and more importantly building and adding scripts to sound objects all over the place. A mixture of ambient sound, transient effects and interactive sound. There were even two screen composer students who were adding evolving music around the spaceship and ghost castle sets I mentioned in my previous post.

To put the icing on the cake we were joined at the end by Robbie Dingo for an hour master-class. Robbie, who develops the best musical instruments in our world (click here to go to his store) and a sound guru, had set up a great interactive walk-through on one of the backlots and we were treated to listening to him speak (and my students spoke back), yes really weird, hearing avies in this world speak - where does their voice come from? Robbie did a post on his in-world blog called ‘Virtual Lecture’ that may explain it. Anyway Robbie took us all through the basics of scripting sound showing large boards with key examples on. We then listened and interacted with each example as we walked around in our class-like huddle. At the end we saw some of Robbies wonderful musical instrument creations, synchronised marimbas and his incredible installation ‘The Whisper Box’. I have installed his Elven drums and other instruments around the island already and Robbie has kindly left the Whisper Box on the island for a while click here to go to precise spot.

All in all a great day and an example of how new people in this world can with the right guidance and mentorship really learn some great skills. From zero to a hundred in six hours.

Here are some images.

Robbie prepared a wonderful interactive teaching walkthrough

We all listened intently as Robbie took us through some more complex scripts.

I had already taught them the basics of looped, ambient and some trigger sound and this is one of the sets we sound designed.

Robbie explains the wonders of the CollisionSound script, we all seem to crash into things regularly in this world.

and here we are about to test that out by each of us walking through the trip wire.

Beware the objects that listen and sensor us. We walk into the sensor circle which triggers a sound. Normally one wouldn’t see the dome of course.

and a fun bit as bees sounds swarm and circle around our heads.

There are more images on flickr that someone uploaded of this event.

Posted by Gary Hazlitt from inside second life

Categories: Communication, Creative Collaboration, Digital Art, Environment Design, Events, Music Experiments, Second Life, Sent In-World, Sound Design, Training, Virtual Worlds
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Those AFTRS folk are doing some machinima and one scene requires a few of us to play ’so-called’ music instruments. I put some of the ones that are available in this world out on the stage and it suddenly dawned on me how weird they all look. Here they are:

First thing I noticed is that they all have fixed textures that don’t animate. Why? Very boring if you ask me. Also the black thing called a ‘piano’ and the orange thing called a ‘marimba’ has an odd key arrangement of a bottom and top row of keys - would take ages to work out how to play it properly, why make it so hard. A few instruments have strings on them and they sound slightly different from each other but not that much that you would need a different instrument, in this world you simply choose a different sound, why change instruments? Weird. All the others you hit and again they all give slightly different thuds or ringing sounds, again why not have one of our worlds animated instruments with lots of different sounds in. Still some avatars here like these bio-instruments, I think they like to pretend they are bios and they make movies where they do pretend to be like bios - I believe there are treatment centres starting up here for that kind of behaviour.

Posted by Gary Hazlitt from inside Second Life

Categories: Music Experiments, Second Life, Sent In-World, Virtual Worlds
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Hi again. Sun morn on Esperance. Thought I would fiddle and finish off the harp - or make it playable by anyone, so come along and have a go. Would be interested to know what you think It is on the theatre stage at the moment. I have created four layers of sounds, bass sounds on the left (larger strings), then ethereal pads next six or seven, then sequences (sounds that have a rhythm) and then at the top you have lead or thematic elements. Any sound can work with any other and it is amazing how addictive it is after a while - the sounds are not pre-loading yet (later) so it takes a short while first time to bring them in, after that they are instant. The strings will be coloured for each sound type later, and they all change to transparent, glassy texture when they are active (might make them glow more - will see if I get time)…anyway not bad for a couple of hours work, including the build of the structure, if I say so myself. I hope us avies enjoy it even though a lot of the sounds were generated in some other world - hehe.

Lots of marketing things - boring I know - to do in-world later, but ya gotta pay ya rent somehow

From Gary Hazlitt posted inside Second Life

Categories: Music Experiments, Second Life, Sent In-World, Virtual Worlds
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This afternoon I thought I would create an in-world magical harp-like instrument (someone showed me some bioharp pictures the other day) that captures some of the feel of the ESPerance island. I called it the ESP Harp, an organic rock (granite) meets the elements (water) creation - with ethereal combinations of sounds never before heard. It is still work in progress and will be adding more sounds but the way you play it is by simply touching the strings in any random order and a mixture of loops and single sounds will emanate from the animated, watery instrument. It has twenty four strings and will have a sequencer element built in too so you can capture your composition. Will give you an update of progress and some avie testing later on. Here it is for now. Hope you like.

Posted by Gary Hazlitt from inside Second Life

Categories: Music Experiments, Second Life, Sent In-World, Virtual Worlds
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As mentioned earlier I have been creating a soundscape floor in the pyragoda bottom floor, where there is a growing collection of AFTRS film stills. The idea was to create a constantly evolving and changing filmic soundscape for visitors to the gallery. So I created eight blocks spread around the floor, each with three fade-in and fade-out string theme fragments - all in the same Gm key. The music evolves because within each block the sound is randomly selected and also as you move around the volume of each block varies creating something unique to each avie who visits. I will be adding other sounds to the installation including digeridoo, harp and flute pads - the key is to make the sounds work with each other in any of the million combinations that will happen as they randomly overlap. So far it sounds very promising as it fits with the moodly look of the film stills from that other world and I look forward to visitor comments.

Posted by Gary Hazlitt from Second Life

Categories: Music Experiments, Second Life, Sent In-World, Virtual Worlds
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