A Real Concert in a Virtual World: Second Life

If I’m the blogger, you must be the bloggee. This morning I got to be both blogger and bloggee, by visiting Second Life, a 3-D virtual world/social networking site. A whole bunch of real people represented by their avatars went into the virtual Fraser performance studio at WGBH to listen to pianist Jeremy Denk play live.

The concert went out over the radio and the on-air feed was streaming on the web, as usual. But in addition, WGBH set up a computer simulation of their new performance studio. I signed up for Second Life a couple days in advance (it’s free) so I could practice. They walk you through it step by step.

Practicing was a hoot. I was in stitches most of the time. I got my avatar to walk up to the Steinway, but when I tried to get her to sit down on the piano bench, she would sit on the ground next to it or behind it; she even sat on the keyboard, but I couldn’t get her to sit on the bench!

When virtual Marty got in a car and started driving, some cute guy came along and hopped in the car with her. That never happens in real life.

It’s fun sitting in the virtual concert hall. People were experimenting with their avatars and live blogging and IMing the whole time. They helped each other figure out how to manipulate the avatars. We didn’t quite get the applause right. Either we were too late, so we’d have big applause in the middle of a movement, or you could hear just one person clapping at a time (the server went slow if too many people were trying to clap at once.)

One person was dressed in a cape and top hat. Several came to the concert in evening clothes even though it was 8 am, my time. One had really big hair, and a couple of folks were off to the side, dancing. Some people arrived by diving in from the ceiling, a la Harry Potter.

Oops. Someone just sat in somebody else’s lap!

Jeremy Denk was wonderful. He played Chopin Impromptus, Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, and a movement of the Ives Concord Sonata. People blogged about the music and got to chat with Jeremy afterwards. The avatars need a little work. A couple of times Jeremy just disappeared, so he’d be playing but his avatar was invisible.

Cathy Fuller was the host and she answered questions during the music. A couple of other people were there, and I apologize but I only got their avatar names, not their real names. We all used made-up names except for Cathy and Jeremy, who were going out live on-air, of course.

How Would I Rate the Experience?

It was an absolute riot! It made the concert experience so much fun. It’s great to be able to interact while you listen, and even a tech-challenged person can figure it out pretty easily. There’s lots of help on the site.

The concertgoers maxed out the “sim,” meaning we had the maximum number of people who could be in that virtual space at one time. There were people from Spain, Germany, Malaysia, Seattle, Cleveland, Boston, Venezuela, Lancaster PA, and Edmonton in Canada.

I think a lot of effort went on behind the scenes to build the virtual space and get the site up and running. They paid for it with a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But if someone could figure out a quick and dirty way to digitize whole scenes, and groups like orchestras, it could become a really great social way to get our classical music out there.

When I was at NPR we did a couple of live webcast concerts which were basically video streaming of live concerts, but those are still passive for the listener. This was much better. It was interactive and creative.

Bravo, WGBH!!!! Brilliant job. Thanks for a great morning!