Performing Live in Second Life
Justin Gagen, Nicholas John Cook · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2016
This chapter provides a general introduction to music in the virtual world Second Life, focusing on relationships between music making in Second Life and in the real world. Concerts in Second Life typically aim to reproduce the conditions of live music in real-world venues. There are, however, significant technological constraints on such reproduction. First, the music is made in the real world and streamed into Second Life. Second, the variable lag that is a basic feature of Second Life means that accurate synchronization of images, gestures, chat, and streamed sound is impossible. From a case study of the virtual band Redzone (of which Gagen is a co-founder), we argue that the most effective way to create liveness in Second Life is not to reproduce the conditions of real-world performance, but rather to reconstruct liveness based on the technological affordances of virtual reality.