Speaking in Light: Parsec Technology Merges Voice to Second Life Interactivity

Meeting the Parsec team with Bettina Tizzy (far right)

VOIP communication has been integrated into Second Life for nearly a year, but only a minority of the community has embraced it.  For most, hearing real voices in the world feels like an artificial, external intrusion.  Parsec-- both an open source project and a kind of immersive musical instrument-- may change Second Life forever. Then again, it's also something that might change several things in the world outside. 

Thanks to the ministrations of metaverse art maven Bettina Tizzy, I just got an advance look (and feel, and listen) to Parsec.  This video I made below hardly does it justice, but as everyone at the demo agreed, the best demonstrations of Parsec are sure to come later.  And until you manage to experience it for yourself, it's the best reference point to start with-- as long as your volume is turned up:

Now that you've seen in, here's what's happening in the video:

Parsec's creators: Dizzy Banjo, Chase Marellan, and Eshi Otawara

When you enter the globe-shaped Parsec theater, you attach one of seven animation sets to yourself; each of these is associated with a sphere, and in turn, audio samples from a designated musical instrument (keyboard, strings, and so on.)  When you speak, the sphere lifts off the ground, and your instrument samples play. ( You'll see that happening in the video, if you watch closely enough.) The immediate result is that conversation is integrated into a harmony of music and dancing spheres, created by people from around the world.  (My specific demo was attended by several people across the US, the UK, and purportedly, Afghanistan.)  This would be impressive in itself, but the creators have embedded Parsec with a secret code that's broken when several Residents vocalize in just the right order-- which thus unlocked, unleashes a supernova crescendo of dazzling light and sound.

The work is a collaboration of three unique talents.  Programmer Chase Marellan is the author of an upcoming book that'll showcase real world applications of SL; he happened to meet Dizzy Banjo during the early Beta tests of SL's Vivox voice software.  Mr. Banjo wanted to see more of VOIP than just mere chat, because he's a seasoned UK musician who's composed professionally for multimedia and videogames, most recently re-branding himself as a "metaverse composer", pioneering the unique task of creating melodic soundscapes for online worlds like Second Life.  A bit like Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" except, as Dizzy points out, in making music for SL environments, "You have to be able to adapt the music to different experiences, exploring non-linear soundtracks." (Among his clients: the government of Mexico, for which he created ambient harmonies that accompany the country's official promotional site in Second Life.)  Third in the team is 3D artist Eshi Otawara, already expert in building immersive virtual spaces.  Chase did the hard programming, hacking together a program that let the Vivox software interact with Linden Script Language, something the SL-based VOIP client was not originally designed for; Dizzy provided the concept and the sound collage; Eshi brought it together into a miniature galaxy of light and spheres, every element perfectly tuned for euphoria.

It's a fun, collaborative mash-up of voice and virtual interactivity, and it's also easy to see how so much more could be done with Parsec.  When you watch the video, for example, you'll hear a woman's ethereal voice, singing-- that's SlimGirlFat, famous for her live performances in Second Life, who was there for the demo.  Rather than talking, seven musicians could animate the spheres and the environment with their singing, turning Parsec into a kind of human synthesizer.  For that matter, the open source code Chase Marellan created could be detached from Parsec, and used for other applications-- disabled people unable to use their hands could, for example, fully interact in Second Life with a version of Parsec that let them walk, build, and perform all the other activities, by voice command. 

Two of the more obvious ideas, but far more are sure to come.  For now, Parsec is a transcendent end in itself, the best way of expressing an underlying truth to the virtual world experience:

"You connect [with each other] through virtual objects with voice," Dizzy Banjo tells me.  Here, a real aspect of your self takes on concrete form in a place that already seems that way. "It's kind of about a way of trying to crystallize...how a lot of people feel about the metaverse."

* * *

Normally I'd add a SLURL teleport link to this post, but Dizzy has an alternate request: "[D]ue to IMMENSE popularity on opening," he writes me, "we are going to have to change Parsec to a system of arranged viewings of groups of 7."  To do that, e-mail [email protected].

Comments

[Ann Otoole]

I think LL is actually listening to the customers on voice. The last survey I took focused a lot on voice to text, text to voice, voice chat logging and recording (documentation of convos), and voice morphing. I think such technology would bring a lot of respect back to LL after the polarizing and discriminatory voice capability was dumped on sl as a shiny to no avail. it failed to attract corporate presence because it is not secure.

More importantly, enabling people who have limits (disabled, handicapped, whatever you want to call it, it is all not PC to say it) is a great move and is a community enabling feature that should be aggressively pursued by LL.

[Dizzy Banjo]

Thanks for such a great description !

We are going to try leaving PARSEC open all the time again now. So anyone should be able to visit it directly from the below SLURL :

http://slurl.com/secondlife/InterSection/200/51/432

[Chase Marellan]

I'll echo Dizzy's thanks for a great description. It's cool to ponder where this might go. Just wanted to mention that Manning has put up the official page for Platform Second Life, the book this comes from, at http://www.manning.com/chase/ .

[Dizzy Banjo]

This is the current SLURL for PARSEC ( something very odd is going on where we cant use a SLURL for higher than 128m ! )

http://slurl.com/secondlife/InterSection/121/147/22