UK Popstar Kirsty Hawkshaw Returns to Second Life With Kinetica, Virtual Installation Created With Her Voice Samples

A leading figure in Britain's thriving electronica/techno music scene with numerous hit singles to her credit, Kirsty Hawkshaw is probably the most prominent professional musician to explore her work in Second Life on a regular basis. After a year hiatus from the metaverse, she's returned to SL, where she's known in-world as KFH Pooraka. During her break from SL, she tells me, "I started to have new/old ideas creeping up on me to be completed... I enjoy it so much, it's such an incredible medium for artists like myself, people who may be isolated in their living spaces, I can once again go in there and build my dreams and then share them."

Her first Second Life project for this new era is "Kinetica", inspired by a London installation of the same name she recently saw with her family. (Here's a lovely video of her visit.) It reminded her of a 2008 installation she was developing in Second Life. "I was inspired to drag out of my inventory the conference hall once again and complete the project in its infant state, develop it a bit more." Here's a look at Kinetica in its current form, in-world, with machinima created by Ms. Pooraka -- each sphere that you see "sings" when you click on it:

As you may have guessed, the voices you hear in the installation (located in the sim of Caberfae) are sung by Kirsty herself, blending together to create a lush, euphoric quality. Experience it for yourself: Direct SLurl teleport to Kinetica at this link.

"I won't boast in being an expert at building sculptures," Kirsty Hawkshaw tells me, "I just know basic scripting and I guess my strengths are 'sound design' and harmonics and ideas."

After the break, some background on how she created the audio experience:

"I created the audio samples by looping a ten second loop in Logic Audio. I then set about 10 separate audio channels. I then sang, used some atmospheric chords all in a complimentary key, then bounced each one individually. I then uploaded each ten second 'wav loop for 10 lindens each, so it probably cost me about 1000 Lindens for the whole project (or around that) to get the sounds into my inventory.

"I then use two separate sound scripts to add the wav to the prim. One 'loops' a few sounds which blend into different chords, creating a hypnotic loop, and one plays the sound when you touch a prim. So there is a constant drone; then if you touch other prims, kinetic spheres at your own will, you can then add to the drone and just play around with it."

As I say, this is just one Second Life project Kirsty is working on; a more ambitious one is coming, and I hope to share more on it soon. For now, do yourself a favor and explore Kinetica first-hand.

Mixed reality pics courtesy of Kirsty; top photo from her Wikipedia entry.

Comments

[Norman Gladstone]

I linked this video on ThreadMap to Caberfae region: http://www.threadmap.com/index/media/1/80289

[Vaneeesa Blaylock]

I'm a huge fan of Adam Ramona & Daruma Picnic's work. Amazingly KFH Pooraka is only the 3rd artist I"m aware of to create a sort of sonic sculptural landscape in all of SL.

So exciting!

As always, thank you for the news!

[ColeMarie Soleil]

Great article :)
informative and interesting :D

[Aubrey Fry]

Kirsty, I am interested in you doing a gig in our new live music platform www.reslive.com

We are in Semi Private Beta at the moment, but we are pretty much there with the platform now. Check the site out, you can also always drop me a message on Skype @ aubreycharlesfry

Let me know what you think of the platform.

All the best, Aubrey