Avatar Orchestra Metaverse (AOM): The Heart Of Tones: The Avatar Orchestra Metaverse In Performance

Title:

The Heart Of Tones: The Avatar Orchestra Metaverse In Performance

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Performers:



• Avatar Orchestra Metaverse (AOM)

Symposium:

• ISEA2015: 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art

Creation Year:

2008 – 2015

Medium:

Live networks virtual reality performance

Artist Statement:

Ten artists meet in a virtual world to experiment with sonic phenomena, telepathy and collectivity, between flesh realities and wired technology. In the first performance, PwRHm, two virtual sine tone instruments are tuned to the harmonic series of the AC frequencies of North America and Europe. Separated by continents, networked performers play with breath, avatar movement and light emissions to explore this pure sonic relationship in virtual intimacy. In the second work, Heart of Tones, a tone is minutely explored within a half tone above and below a prescribed pitch, through subtle timbre variations and movements by performers on virtual instruments. The resultant beats, timbre shifts and audio illusions create rhythms, transformations and textures that are precisely mirrored in colour spectrum shifts on virtual screens and capes worn by the avatar performers. With the final work in the series, Aleatricity, two hundred years of science, technology and cultural history are exposed when the accidental discovery of the nerve-system by Luigi Galvani and the world’s first science-fiction novel Frankenstein are brought into visual and acoustic proximity.

1. PwRHm by Tina Pearson
2. The Heart of Tones by Pauline Oliveros
3. Aleatricity by Andreas Müller

Avatar Orchestra Metaverse (AOM) is a globally dispersed telematic collective based in the virtual online environment Second Life. AOM investigates possibilities of networked audiovisual performance with virtual instruments that enable each member to trigger sounds, animations and visuals independently while playing together in real time. AOM’s experiments with sonic phenomena, perception, culture, artistic practice and identity in sometimes provocative contexts have led the group to revelations about technology and its intersections with thoughts, feelings, processes and interactions. Since its formation in 2007, AOM has created over thirty audiovisual works by sixteen composers screened live in eleven countries.

• Text with images (PDF) p. 98

Category:

• Performances