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This piece is written for Avatar Orchestra Metaverse (AOM) during march and april 2007 by Miulew Takahe. Rue Blanche is to be performed in Second Life with seven or more avatar players and one conductor. Preferred instrument to play the piece with is the instruments of Bingo Onomatopoeia, called sineHUDs. The piece is exploring the natural sinus tone series and the relations to beating frequencies and risset tones. Additional selected "found sounds" are to be played with the sound textures that the sinus tones generates.

Title: Rue Blanche

Length: 7'00

Format: mp3, 192 kbps/stereo

Performers: Avatar Orchestra Metaverse

Composer: Björn Eriksson (aka Miulew Takahe)

Instrument maker: Andreas Mueller (aka Bingo Onomatopoeia)

Description of work

-When did you feel that the work was starting to be «written»?

Rue Blanche was born in the very moment when AOM had finished their first performance (14^th march-07) of the piece Vickys Mosquitos #13 and I felt inspiration to write a new piece that explored more the basic sound components, the natural sine tone series. Nothing new in itself composing with sine tones but new for me in this avatar orchestral context and new for the orchestra to play these pure sounds together. The work was starting to really take off after the first rehearsal when we tested just some basic sine tone series without even having proper instruments to play them with. It sounded so good so I just had to keep on develop the piece and also involve Bingo in the creation of  the so called sinusHUDs (the Second Life instrument).

Later I wrote the first score (now revised 2 times) which is basically instructions on what sine tones to play and when to add found sounds and more. I think the piece is meant to be conducted as it never sounds exactly the same, partly due to the so called "lag" in Second Life. The piece is also changing as members brings in new found sounds from time to time. The lag (time delays) comes and goes very much in different sims of Second Life, depending on how many in audience and more. In fact we are interacting with each other as musicians in a virtual game world - we are not interacting with a game. We have adapted a look on the Second Life lag in the orchestra as a creative challenge and we have taken the standpoint that SL is like an instrument. It has possibilities that are new as well as some limitations that are new, e.g. dynamic playing has to be done by alternating the frequency how often a certain sound is played and by the distance to the listener, the avatar in audience. AOM is not trying to simulate a real life orchestra or band . We are focusing on the outcome and results and are trying to achieve it with the means we find within SL or can create there.

The title Rue Blanche is inspired by the book Le Vol d'Icare by Raymond Queneau which I was reading during the period of composing. The character Icarus is in this book finding himself somewhat lost on Rue Blanche, after the writer and inventor looses him from the newly written pages, and this is a bit how I felt also, suddenly jumping into the role of a composer and conductor, which is something that is a new experience for me. Finding myself in a new landscape full of possibilities which really can happen in the immersive contexts of projects run in Second Life… and in real life too if you are open and let your creativity not to be restricted. Together with the creative members of the orchestra it has been very joyful to develop this piece.

 -How did that first become evident to you?( that the piece was being written)

It became evident to me after the second rehearsal when there was a rough first score at hands and we did a first recording of our rehearsal. The joy of hearing what we together was shaping was stunning and cannot be described in few words. Also the comments from listeners and other orchestra players were essential for the take-off of the piece.

 

Bio's for AOM orchestra and some of the members

The Avatar Orchestra Metaverse (AOM) is an international new-music collective based in the popular virtual world, Second Life.  Composers and performers hail from such countries as: Sweden, Norway, Italy, Germany, U.S.A. and Canada.  

http://avatarorchestra.blogspot.com  

http://www.secondlife.com

Shintaro Miyazaki (aka Maximillian Nakamura) born 1980 in Berlin, grown up in Basle (Switzerland) is mediatheorist and -philosopher, curator and soundartist, based in Berlin, Germany. Miyazaki is member of Laptoporchester/Berlin and played at several venues in Switzerland, Germany and Poland. He is also co-curator and founder of la-condition-japonaise, Berlin based japanese contemporary arts and is co-curator and founder of Dorkbot Second Life. Shintaro is also the founder and initiator of the AOM.

http://www.netzknoten.net/ 

http://la-conditionjaponaise.com/ 

http://rhizomatic.wordpress.com/

Björn Eriksson (aka Miulew Takahe) is a swedish sound artist working mostly with collaborative and immersive sound and music projects. Works with digital audio in the fields of phonography, digital synthesis and improvisation. As a long time member with Tapegerm Collective and also being part of the Sound Injury, Vickys Mosquitos happenings and .microsound projects aswell as a number of headphone festivals has also made Björn to be further involved in a number of projects internationally. The latest international involvement in projects is the AOM where he writes music, conducts and leads rehearsals within Second Life.

http://miulew.blogspot.com/

http://ruccas.org/wiki.pl/Miulew

Andreas Mueller (aka Bingo Onomatopoeia) was declared to be insane by his mother when she caught him in the kitchen recording a chamber concerto for washing machine, breadcutter, tape-loop and metronome at the tender age of 12. He managed to convince her successfully that he was not and only tried out what he had read in a book about modern music he had picked up from the public library. Since then he has worked in many areas of visual and acoustic art/noise, both digital and analogue. He currently works with the media-art group Pomodoro Bolzano (Regensburg, Germany) and in several collaborations within Second Life.

http://www.pbspace.de/

Jeremy Owen Turner (aka Wirxli Flimflam) is an internationally exhibiting new-media performance artist based in Vancouver, Canada. He studied music composition at the University of Victoria with John Celona and Christopher Butterfield. Turner is a co-curator with Janne Vanhanen (Helsinki) for a digital-audio curatorial project called GreatestBits. He has also interviewed important composers for such publications as Musicworks Magazine and C-Theory. 

http://classicblogs.blogspot.com 

http://www.greatestbits.com

Leif Inge (aka. Gumnosophistai Nurmi) and his work is leaning heavily on the esthetics of mixing or misplacing disparate elements in the work itself and even more in the context it is set. With the context and the definitions used to define it, it works as cultural statements in   such way that the resulting work is often hard to brand in one field rather than the other.

9 Beet Stretch is Leif Inge's major work in sound, and has become emblematic of his work even if his art is coming in a great variety of forms and fields and crafts, and other projects includes where stained glass is replacing car windscreens, embroidery in strainers, maasai branding on western cattlestock, and stage set with sand for dance performance &c. Leif Inge frequently collaborate across various fields of art and nonart, and his work has been featured worldwide in venues like BizArt Art Center, Shanghai; Centro Nacional de las Artes, México; Wien Modern, Vienna, and Diapason Gallery, New York. Leif Inge is currently based in Oslo, and do also publish writings irregularly with reviews of contemporary arts and sounds and
interviews of ditto artists both active in Second Life and active in other societies.
http://expandedfield.net

 

-Björn Eriksson, Sollefteå, Sweden 14th june 2007

 

 

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