When I was in college, the Cyberpunk literary movement was in full swing. In his seminal book Neuromancer, William Gibson had coined the term Cyberspace. Just after my graduation, the Internet woke up for the first time. The Sci-Fi geek in me wondered how long it was going to take until I was in a virtual universe traveling all over the “globe” and seeing wonders I’d never considered.
One of my favorite books during this period was Neal Stephenson’s 1992 book Snow Crash. In Stephenson’s world, a superengineer named Hiro Protagonist (YEAH! HIRO FRIGGIN’ PROTAGONIST!) created a virtual world called the Metaverse where corporations and AIs were represented by avatars of buildings. Within this construct he created a virtual club called The Black Sun. It was an online meeting place for the digital elite. Every user had a custom avatar. The focus of The Black Sun was the music. You could play all the clubs you wanted, but if you wanted to get your music to the global tastemakers you had to play The Black Sun. And it was all accessed via a VR headset.
Is this starting to sound plausible to you?
VRPeggio from Zero Transform is attacking this dream from the live music angle. VRPeggio is a Virtual Reality electronic music creation and DJ application. With VRPeggio all manner of performance spaces and visual effects can be created and triggered by a performer without the prohibitive cost of lighting and effects, and without the problem inherent to pyrotechnics known as “a horrible death.” You perform a live show you created in a virtual hall with virtual instruments and virtual effects, but that’s not all. Instead of a canned sterile by-rote performance, you can perform a collaborative piece with your friends. You get all the intimacy of a small club and the spontaneity of jamming in your garage on an arena scale. Still not done. Your friends can attend your performance from anywhere in the world via VR headsets, and you’ll see their customized avatars standing right in front of you
Obviously this all starts with the artist. In the editor you will be able to create music using virtual audio sources and add controllers. You can use the traditional drum pad and keyboard, a virtual theremin played by manipulating a beam of light, and of course you customize the layout to your taste. You can create compositions in advance, perform completely live, or both. When the music is ready, you can set auto-triggers for light effects and pyrotechnics or trigger them yourself. We will have a vast palette of visual effects from the subtle to the epic. Once again, these could be pre-programmed with the audio or triggered live. You can play the lighting rig just like any other instrument. Depending on the platform, you can use the built-in microphones to sing along with your creation, be your own hype-man live, or just communicate with your collaborators.
The possibilities do not end with your own creations or those of the community. We intend to invite the biggest acts in the world to work with us in bringing content to you. Imagine avatar versions of Daft Punk or DeadMau5 performing works crafted for this platform for you in real time or recorded for later. Imagine being able to watch from anywhere in the club from the balcony to the pit to hovering over the performer. It’s VR. Gravity need not apply and the laws of physics are just suggestions..
It will be years before we can put a jack into the base of our skull and experience worlds with all the sights, sounds, touches, tastes and smells of reality. I can’t buy you a drink at The Black Sun yet, but this will be one good solid step in that direction.
Gary Spinrad
Audio Director — Zero Transform
Just because I have a short attention span doesn’t mean I