Fools Paradise: VR Design  

Introduction    Artists     Libretto    Composition    VR Design    Production
           
     
   
     
 

A view from the air

 

The performance version is designed for live musicians, voice, real time electronic sound processing, and a "VR Performer." The VR performer explores the VR landscape as a knowledgeable guide. The audience sees the virtual world from the point of view of the VR performer, on projection screens in the performance hall. The VR performer's location within the virtual world determines which section of the score the musicians are executing and controls aspects of the sound processing.

Execution of the work proceeds more or less as follows:

Prelude: Our point of view begins within the darkness of the cave and emerges into the light of the bracken slope.

Passage: We climb the stairs to the top of the mesa.

Song cycle: We move to a specific sculpture which serves as the entry point, and then follow the paths over the meadow, from sculpture to sculpture. Each sculpture presents several choices of path. Each visit to a sculpture leads to the performance of a song. Except for the entry and exit points, the order and number of songs performed is up to the VR performer. The text for the songs is taken from William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." At the entry point, the text is "Eternity is in love with the works of time."

Interlude: A visit to the edge of the waterfall (water language flowing through time and memory back to its source).

Song cycle: We visit more sculptural figures/song performances within the meadow. Exit point: "No bird flies to high; if it flies with its own wings."

Coda: Rising through the clouds, we look down on the island. The massive figures turn towards each other and join hands as we sail out of sight.