User:Dizzy Banjo
Dizzy Banjo Rez Day : Jan 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 is the avatar of Robert Thomas, a London based composer. Dizzy Banjo Music and Sound, also the name of his music company, 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
Music Academy OnLive with Benton Wunderlich
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
Dizzy Banjo : Seeing with our Ears Deja-Vu International Magazine lifestyle article December 08 Issue http://dejavu-intl.com/
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]
Czech national radio themes (Cesky Rohzlas)
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. BBC article here : [10]
January 2008
Passage to Zhong Fu
A machinima originally made for the 48 hour film festival in Second Life [11] 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 64,000 views on youtube. Watch here ( high quality ) : [12] Watch here ( youtube ) : [13]
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 : [14]
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 : [15] 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 [16] in San Francisco Feb 2008 [17]
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 : [18] 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 : [19] Listen to the track ( streaming ) here : [20]
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 Q1 2009 by Manning Press. Visit here : [21] PARSEC blog ( with many links to many media articles ) here : [22]
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 : [23]
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 installation by Eshi Otawara hosted on Tivona for a number of months, 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 : [24] ) and as text messages submitted to him in notecard form.
Message in a Bottle Machinima
This machinima of the SL5B Message in a Bottle project was featured on the Linden blog homepage and was used as part of the SLCC 2008 presentation given by Philip Linden / Rosedale. It has had over 3000 views on youtube and other video sites. It was also voted as one of the top 15 machinima in Second Life for the 2008 Rezzable Machinima Festival. Watch it here : [25]
Museum of Robots in SL Promotional Music
Dizzy provided music for the Museum of Robots in SL promotional video. Watch here : [26]
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 : [27]
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 :[28]
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.
Musical Sound design for SCDA Estates
Dizzy provided sound design for a series of interactive vendors for this, Scope Cleaver Design's rental estate in Second Life.