He scored our Halloween “Zombie Island” events in real-time and headlined High Fidelity’s first virtual reality festival, FUTVRE LANDS, in what, to our knowledge, is the largest live concert ever staged entirely in VR. Today, we’re excited to make the collaboration official. Thomas Dolby is formally joining High Fidelity’s board of advisors!
As someone who's experimented with merging VR and music for decades, it's no surprise Thomas Dolby first registered his interest in High Fidelity by showing up in-world as an anonymous avatar. Presumably Dolby will help improve live music performances in social VR. As the Johns Hopkins professor commented on New World Notes recently, his concert in High Fidelity showed him first-hand that there's many kinks to work out, writing: "Yeah, it believe me, it is many magnitudes more stressful doing it virtually! This performance took years off my life!" But in the same post, he also expressed hope than live shows in VR will improve over time, and become more than glorified Internet radio with 3D graphics:
As you know, Moore's Law will take care of the graphic issue within a few years. But a radio broadcast is one-to-many. This is many-to-many, as you could turn and have a conversation with your neighbor and agree to move to a different spot. Or heckle the performer (as happened!) and get a personal response. Or if you get bored, decide to teleport to a different stage, or to a game/educational/sex environment; or build your own world and perform yourself.
More on Dolby joining the board here. Interestingly, he's not the only High Fidelity advisor outside Silicon Valley: Other board members include Hollywood producer Lauren Selig (Hacksaw Ridge, Lone Survivor), bazillionaire/X Prize founder Peter Diamandis, and genius computer scientist Stephen Wolfram.
I'm reading this with a little bit of sadness because there was a time when I would have found this news incredibly exciting. I saw this post come up yesterday and I was interested to see what others had to say about it.
It was almost exactly eleven years ago that I was introduced to Second Life. It all seemed so big and exciting and hopeful. That concept of VR felt whole and I felt important to it in my own naive and inexperienced little way. Maybe I was just really stupid.
Now, in 2019, it all feels broken and separate. The future is in the hands of board members and experts and the next big thing may happen in a world that I don't even belong to. I'm not even sure what I want any more, but I want more than this. I want more than just to wait with my credit card until somebody tantalizes with a gadget or an experience to buy. Maybe this is just my problem, but from the looks of things, the status quo isn't really bringing in the crowds.
Posted by: Clara Seller | Tuesday, January 15, 2019 at 08:10 AM