User:Dizzy Banjo

Dizzy Banjo (January 30 2005) is a composer and sound designer in Second Life, best known for his work on metaversal soundtracks, installation art and machinima. He is also a multi instrumentalist and performs in Second Life ( very rarely ). Dizzy Banjo Music and Sound, his RL company, also works in various other fields of media composition, including radio, advertising and video game soundtracks. Dizzy is an official Second Life Linden Lab (R) Solution Provider (SLDEV) - Music and Sound Consultant.

He was featured on the official Linden Lab showcase blog on Mon 28th Jan 2008 : [1]

He also writes a blog investigating soundtracking virtual worlds here : [2]

Dizzy also organises Metamusic, a SL group of musicians, scripters, builders and designers interested in pushing the boundaries of what is possible with music and sound in Second Life. This group had a series of text based discussions in late 2007, and Dizzy plans to host a series of voice based panels, in conjunction with some members of Linden Lab at some point in 2008. He is also creating a series of Metamusic video podcasts documenting various sound and music installtion projects around the SL Grid. The first ( on Bid Messmer's "Remedy Exploration" ) can be found here : [3]

Dizzy is also a contributing Second Life arts editor with SLNN.

Interviews and Panel Discussions

Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe

[4]

Music Academy OnLive with Benton Wunderlich

[5]

SL Musicians building RL Careers at SL5B

Panel : Nexeus Fatale, Keiko Takamura, Hep Shepherd, Slim Warrior, Dizzy Banjo, Benton Wunderlich. Panel hosted by Blondin Linden.

Metaverse Week in Review on Operator 11

Dizzy often contributes to Metaverse Week in Review, an Operator 11 show hosted by Malburns Writer and Tara Yeats :

Selected other press

Company websites

Official blog of Orange in SL : [6]

Metaverse blogs

PARSEC : http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/01/speaking-in-lig.html#more MEXICO : http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/04/music-for-the-m.html http://npirl.blogspot.com/2008/04/dizzy-banjos-designs-on-music-for.html DYNAFLEUR : http://npirl.blogspot.com/2008/01/dynafleur-dynamics-of-group.html MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE : http://secondslog.blogspot.com/2008/06/lillie-yifu-and-dizzy-banjos-message-in.html

Recent Projects

Done in 2007

Visit Mexico - Chichen Itza

Promotional Machinima Score for Advanced Virtual. Soundtrack to this machinima made to promote the first stage of Mexico's official presence in Second Life. The Visit Mexico 1 sim was built to promote Chichen Itza's bid to be come a new wonder of the world. Dizzy Banjo also provided a series of voiceover audio tours, which accompany the visitors as they explore the island riding a giant butterfly. The machinima was made by Planet Video. Watch the machinima here : [7]

Revlon - Love your Lips

Commercial music for Revlon, with Sugar Cube Studios. watch here [8]

Action Movie Trailers

Confidential Client [9]

Tales from the Green Man's Daughter

60 minute audiobook score (Red Silk Arts)

Confidential Title

Curve Studios / Playstation 3 game in development

Equanimity

Music / sound assistant on this official soundtrack to the first holographic portrait of HRH Queen of England - in conjunction with Jersey Heritage Trust and sound artist Leanda Brass.

January 2008

Passage to Zhong Fu

A machinima originally made for the 48 hour film festival in Second Life [10] directed by Verdi Millionsofus, and music by Dizzy Banjo. The film also featured Poid Mahovlich and Duckyfresh Watanabe in various roles. A directors cut of the film was screened on Princeton's sims in Second Life in February 2008. Since this showing the film has become somewhat of a cult SL Machinima, with over 60,000 views on youtube. Watch here ( high quality ) : [11] Watch here ( youtube ) : [12]

DynaFleur

DynaFleur is an interactive installation by Douglas Story and Desdemona Enfield, with music and sound by Dizzy Banjo and terraforming by Poid Mahovlich. It develops and expands Keystone Bouchard's open source Reflexive Architecture scripts. The DynaFleur scripts ( by Desdemona Enfield ) are also now opensourced. It was commissioned by Princeton University. Visit here : [13]

vBusiness Expo

Machinima promo soundtrack for a business conference happening in Q2 2008 in Second Life. Machinima directed by Kronos Kirkorian. vBusiness Expo is organised by the opensource content provider's Clever Zebra, ( formerly metaversed.com ) Watch here : [14] Official site of vBusiness Expo : http://vbusinessexpo.com/

Explodemon!

Promotional video soundtrack for this Xbox 360/PlayStation®3 console game in development by Curve studios. Exhibited at the Game Developers Conference [15] in San Francisco Feb 2008 [16]

February 2008

Pangaea Island Herbie Hancock Remix

Pangaea Island ( Herbie Hancock's official presence in Second Life ), organised a competition to remix his music. Dizzy Banjo entered this competition with Funk Shepherd. The resulting track was shortlisted and given special mention on the website here : [17] The track features many references to Second Life in the lyrics and user interface sounds from Second Life, as well as many samples of various Herbie Hancock tracks, and much meticulously replayed content. Download the track here : [18] Listen to the track ( streaming ) here : [19]

PARSEC

A giant interactive virtual instrument / installation, playable by 7 Second Life avatars with their voice alone. This project pioneered the concept of controlling Second Life objects and sounds with SL voice. Through this approach it creates a non linear soundtrack.

This project, with builder / artist / fashion designer Eshi Otawara and scripter Chase Marellan, was completed as part of a book about Second Life due to published in Q2 2008 by Intersection Press. Visit here : [20] PARSEC blog ( with many links to many media articles ) here : [21]

March 2008

Visit Mexico - Ruta Maya

A 30 minute in world orchestral score with additional Mayan instrumentation, specifically composed for the 2 sim extension of Mexico's official presence in Second Life, implemented by Advanced Virtual. The music of Ruta Maya changes with user exploration. Ruta Maya also features a very dense highly immersive environmental soundscape. Visit here : [22]

Promotional machinima score for Millions of Us

Confidential

May 2008

Ephemeral

Soundtrack to this short term project on Princeton University's WWS Sim by Poid Mahovlich. A mysterious dark wooded landscape with howling wolves and thunder clouds.

Everything is a Tribute to Mozart

Soundtrack to this installtion by Eshi Otawara on Tivona, the SL music community hub island.

June 2008

SL5B Terraform Artist

Dizzy terraformed a large proportion of the 20 sim SL5B event.

Message in a Bottle for SL5B

Together with Lillie Yifu, Dizzy created a huge bottle installation on SL5B Copy sim. The bottle contains many messages to Second Life on its 5th birthday from the residents of Second Life. Represented as both audio recordings ( dizzy created a video tutorial of how to submit here : [23] ) and as text messages submitted to him in notecard form.

Museum of Robots in SL Promotional Music

Dizzy provided music for the Museum of Robots in SL promotional video. Watch here : [24]

July 2008

Breather Surface

Music and short machinima with piano music inspired by Miki Gymnast's 14000+ prim sculpture of the same name briefly hosted on Rezzable Collectors Gallery. Watch here : [25]

ColeMarie Soleil Live at SL5B Machinima

Short machinima of Second Life musician ColeMarie Soleil performing at the finale concert of Second Life's 5th birthday. Featured on CNN's iReport site : Watch here :[26]

Triptych

Soundtrack to an installation of the same name by Poid Mahovlich, on Princeton University's Princeton North sim.

August 2008

Gestural Music 01

An interactive exhibit for 3 avatars which allows users to create music through mouse gestures. Exhibited at the SLART® Summer Festival 2008.

September 2008

IO at Burning Life 08

Dizzy was chosen for one of the juried artist plots at Burning Life 08, for which he created an immersive interactive ride like installation called IO. The installation teleported residents high above the playa, up into a ethereal heavenly mothership space, from which they could take a capsule ride way up to over 1000m through a giant glowing nebula. The build, whilst occupying over 600m of total height used no megaprims. It featured physics scripting by Chase Marellan. IO was also set to a haunting score comissioned by the piano and singing saw duet Alpha Walker and David Weiss, which Dizzy composed specifically for the installation. The movement of the capsules was timed to synchronise with the evolition of the music.