New World Notes

Listen: "Martha Wayne", A Love Song from Batman's Mom -- Written & Performed by Keiko Takamura & Alice Knows Karate

Perfect listening for Valentine's Day, this is "Martha Wayne" from Alice Knows Karate, the new project from legendary geek pop artist Keiko Takamura. (Stream above, buy a copy from Keiko and crew from many platforms here.) Keiko launched her career as a live singer in Second Life (featured on MTV), and has been creating and performing insanely catchy songs ever since, much of them devoted to characters and stories from beloved games and comics. This one is a sexy, smart, torch songy take on Batman's origin story, as told by an often unacknowledged character: Batman's mom Martha Wayne.

"I wanted to write a song that was like if Lana Del Rey wrote a love ballad for Batman: The Animated Series," Keiko explains.
The show's composer, Shirley Walker, used music to really cement the iconic goth-deco aesthetic -- I wanted to capture a little bit of that as an homage. I also wanted to write a love song that acknowledged the impermanence of life, the inevitability of death (wow, Herzog much?) Choosing to relish that fact rather than avoid it."

And yes, Martha Wayne doesn't exactly have a happy ending, but Keiko insists this is still a song for Valentine's Day:

Fortnite Follows Second Life's Footsteps Further Hosting "Live" In-Game Concert of RL Popstar Marshmello

First came in-game dance clubs, then came private, user-customizable islands, now right on schedule, Fortnite is following Second Life's footsteps yet again with Marshmello, a rising EDM star, who's reportedly performing live in-game this weekend:

Info is continuously coming out about the event as we speak, but here’s what we know so far. The event will begin at 2 PM ET on Saturday, though it’s not clear how long it will run for. It takes place in Pleasant Park, though you may see the lights/hear the music from anywhere on the map... There’s apparently a cosmetic bundle for the event which will include a Marshmello skin, pickaxe and spray. No word on pricing. There are some leaked animations that show “DJ dancing” for lack of a better term which would appear to be how Marshmello himself will act on stage.

Since Fortnite Battle Royale is run on thousands of separate servers, it's debatable how "live" Marshmello is actually going to be, beyond the lucky 100 (or so) players who get to be in his actual server. The chatter in Reddit's Fortnite board strongly suggests his music files are already embedded in the game client; if that's right, there may be hundreds or even thousands of automated copies of Marshmello's performing avatars synced to canned audio files of his show, to serve such a huge audience. (Fortnite peak user concurrency is a seriously insane 8 million+.)

Hat tip Forbe's Paul Tassi, who says this "has the potential to be a very cool, very unique moment in gaming, a live concert embedded in a game where millions attend in real-time." Millions of audience members are unique, and it's definitely cool, but far as real-time concerts by real world music stars in online games, we need to go back to ancient times (by which I mean 2006) and Suzanne Vega in Second Life:

Watch Thomas Dolby Performing in High Fidelity and Decide if Social VR is the Future of Live Online Music

Notwithstanding some technical difficulties here and there, and occasional herky-jerky movement from his avatar, this is pretty impressive and mind-bending: Coming in live from his studio at Johns Hopkins in Maryland to High Fidelity's servers in San Francisco, in front of an audience of 200 or so avatars, here's pop star Thomas Dolby rigged to a full body VR rig, performing live in the virtual world last weekend. While he does his hit "Hyperactive" in this long clip (toward the end), he doesn't do "She Blinded Me With Science". However, High Fidelity's Ryan Downe does get the entire audience to shout "SCIENCE!" at the same time -- which in itself demonstrates how real time and low latency High Fidelity's technical performance is. (You can even hear a lot of audience chatter in the background, just as you would if you saw Dolby at a real world club venue.)

Back in 2006 when Suzanne Vega performed live in Second life in front of some 80 people, many people (i.e. me) were prompted to wonder if virtual world performances were the future of live music online. Clearly it was too early to ask that question back then -- during Vega's show, the system groaned to handle that many audience members -- but now, finally, is a good time to raise that topic again:

Star is Reborn: Rising EDM Vocalist Briefly Returns to Second Life to Test Out New Material Through His Avatar, Skye Galaxy

In case you missed it over the last few months, Skye Galaxy briefly returned to Second Life for a series of live performances. Touted across SL a decade ago as the virtual world's first breakout pop star for his great vocal stylings and songwriting, he went on to become just that with a viral live video performance, later flying to Europe to perform with a top DJ, among other milestones. (I'm intentionally not mentioning his real life name in case he wants to keep his avatar and real world brands separate.)  

"I came back for a bit, wanted to stretch the vocal cords and try out some new tunes," Skye's owner tells me over e-mail. If you missed his latest in-world shows (like the one above), there's a chance you might get another chance soon:

Now in LA: Experience Awesome 3D Video & Machine Learning-Based Music Projected on the Walt Disney Concert Hall -- Adaptive Sound Artist Robert Thomas on How the Soundtrack Was Created

Video shot during last night's WDCH preview by Brooke Erdmann

If you're anywhere near downtown Los Angeles between tonight and October 6, you absolutely have to experience WDCH DREAMS. I was lucky enough to attend a preview with my wife last night (almost bumping into the Mayor, who was also there) and we were utterly dazzled by this flood of images and music echoing off Frank Gehry's famed concert hall:

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has commissioned award-winning media artist Refik Anadol to create unprecedented, breathtaking, three-dimensional projections onto the steel exterior of Walt Disney Concert Hall to signal the commencement of the LA Phil’s 100-year anniversary celebrations. Free and open to the public, nightly performances are scheduled to occur every half hour, with the first performance at 7:30 p.m., and the last at 11:30 p.m., September 28 to October 6... WDCH Dreams’ accompanying soundtrack was created from hand-picked audio from the LA Phil’s archival recordings. Sound designers Robert Thomas, and Kerim Karaoglu augmented these selections by using machine-learning algorithms to find similar performances recorded throughout the LA Phil’s history, creating a unique exploration of historic audio recordings. 

Adaptive music/sound artist Robert Thomas, as longtime New World Notes readers know, has been creating ambitious audio experiences across many mediums and technologies over the years. (Full disclosure: Also a pal.) I first met him when he was creating voice-activated installations and location-reactive soundtracks in the virtual world of Second Life. After SL he went on to co-create projects with luminaries like Massive Attack, Imogen Heap, Ben Burtt (sound designer for the Star Wars movies), and Hans Zimmer. (Robert and Zimmer worked with director Chris Nolan to create an interactive audio app for his movie Inception.)

Based in London, Robert tells me how he and his collaborators used machine learning to take and shape disparate performances and composers from the LA Phil's massive archive of recordings, and sculpt them into a completely new soundtrack:

Watch: Xara Fiasco, Spectacular Singer Who Performs Originals Live in SL

Xara Fiasco is an Australia-based singer who performs original songs live from Second Life, and when I started watching this video above, I was somewhat skeptical until about 2:13 minutes in when she started belting out an original that pretty much blew me away. There's vocal range, there's emotional depth, there's some Tori Amos-eseque piano virtuosity, there's some Regina Spector-ish whispery inflections, there's some thrilling crescendos which light up the room.

Three minutes in, I knew I needed to blog this, but I have to conclude with a mystery:

Kickstart This: Keiko Takamura's Latest Album Project Inspired by Fables & Fable-Inspired Games "The Path” by Tale of Tales & "American McGee’s Alice"

Alice Knows Karate is the name of the latest Kickstarter-driven music project from Keiko Takamura, the Bay Area-based popstar who (as longtime NWN readers know), first launched her singing career over a decade ago by performing in Second Life, which went on to be featured in an MTV documentary.  A sharp and funny songwriter, she's remained true to her geek roots, performing at a couple SLCC conventions, creating this fantastic song inspired by Bioshock and using SL machinima for the music video, and co-funding a previous album with Linden Dollars.

If successfully Kickstarted, her Fablewave EP will also feature music inspired by games:

Chouchou, Pioneering Virtual World Music Duo, Launching 10 Year Anniversary Album Featuring Many Songs First Launched in Second Life

Chouchou is an indie duo with a pretty solid fanbase and a great, jazzy-ambient sound (think Massive Attack or Morcheeba with some J-Pop hooks) that's about to launch its 10 year anniversary album. (On February 23, to be exact -- follow them on Twitter for updates.) As longtime readers may remember, Chouchou originally launched in Second Life, with the two members performing live in SL from two parts of the world:

Though Japanese by birth, she tells me, juliet Heberle has lived in New York City for the last decade; Arabesque is based in Tokyo, and the two have never met in real life.  He transmits his music digitally, she records her vocals over them, and in Second Life, they perform live together while several thousand miles away.  "He hears what I hear," says juliet, "so I easily know what he wants for each song without asking him. I think that's why we can grow our music together."

In fact, some years ago they were once rated the top music group in Second Life. So unsurprisingly, this new album features many songs first launched during their SL performances:

Unwind This Weekend With Proteus, a Procedurally-Generated World of Art, Music, and Life

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

The criticism that's been leveled against Ed Key and David Kanaga's retro, artistic, musical exploration game Proteus since its release a few weeks ago probably sounds all too familiar to fans of Second Life (who account for a significant chunk of NWN's audience.) The friendlier discussions are full of questions like "what are you supposed to do", "where do you go" and "isn't this boring" while others have even compared it to a screensaver, or refused to think of it as a game at all.

This is why, even though Hamlet briefly covered Proteus earlier this month, I felt compelled to return to it for a much more in-depth look. Surely if any one community could understand and agree on what makes Proteus so special, it would be ours.

Cull TV Helps Catapult Indie Musician Toward Stardom

Katherine de Leon and John Hurliman at Cull TV HQ

Cull TV, the new, user-curated music video streaming service from Linden Lab and Second Life alum, has only been live for a few months, but it's already helped an indie performer get a big break: Jesse Israel of Cantora Records recently came across the Cull stream of young Harlem hiphop performer Azealia Banks, liked what he heard, and hired her to perform at the label's CMJ afterparty, a performance which in turn got a good review on Pitchfork, a blog that often breaks out rising indie stars. This happened in October, but I only got word about it last week during a visit with Cull's founders, Katherine de Leon and John Hurliman, at their SOMA office. They spoke with a lot of passion about Cull giving indie artists a new way to promote their music online, and were thrilled to see Azealia fast on the rise. As record mogul Israel puts it, "I love that it was a music startup that first showed Cantora about Azealia."

Here's her top track on Cull, and it's really great. (NSFW warning: contains salty language, provokes irresistible desire to dance your ass off.) There's a some indie musicians big in Second Life who are about as great, and now that Cull can stream in-world, I bet it could become a handy new tool to get their music to a larger audience, in SL and beyond.