Massive online collaboration: Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 4

As an amateur singer myself, I'm a bit ashamed that I only took notice of Eric Whitacre's virtual choir with the release of the fourth video on 11 July, premiered as part of the Coronation celebration gala concert.

It's a great example of how the online technology enables massive scale collaboration - in this case, the performance of a very large community choir: the volunteer singers (nearly 6000 of them in Virtual Choir 4, from over 100 countries) record their parts individually on a webcam and upload the recordings to Whitacre's team, who (funded by Kickstarter) mix the recordings together and create a video.

This is a method which excellently suits Whitacre, who for a classical composer has a huge worldwide fanbase ready to jump at the chance of singing his music to and with him. It also suits his trademark big-chord musical style: small differences and imperfections are averaged out in the aggregation process. (It wouldn't work so well, I think, for Bach's rapid counterpoint.)

Here's Whitacre being interviewed by Tim Lihoreau of ClassicFM just after the call for submissions, in which poor old Tim has to sightread the baritone part in front of its composer in order to show the working of the online interface (note the demonstration tracks, conducting and click tracks, and the ability to make multiple attempts).



Some of the singers have done their own video aggregations. One very skilled performer produced a video of himself singing all eight parts - but perhaps the more revealing aggregation is this one of fifteen singers (the originator did both soprano and alto parts); Eric Whitacre's conducting track is in the middle.



And here's the final product, with the addition of soloists, electronica instrumental track, and Manga-style animation.

Sign me up for Virtual Choir 5...


See also
Eric Whitacre's 2011 TED talk, reflecting on the Virtual Choir phenomenon and introducing Virtual Choir 2
Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir site

Seen and heard: June 2013

John Tyndale, the most dangerous man in England - Melvyn Bragg TV programme, bringing out the awesome level of Tyndale's defiance in producing an English translation of the Bible (as shown by the punishment he received) and his influence on the English language (the King James Authorised version of the Bible was based on Coverdale's, which in turn was based on Tyndale's). Also interesting for Tyndale's repeated image of the ploughboy as his ideal reader, the person for whom he was writing his translation. Learner-centred education, in its way.

Contact - rewatched the 1997 film on DVD. I love the high concept story, with its twin themes of contact and faith; the execution isn't quite as good as the conception, but Jodie Foster is excellent and convincing as the astronomer who picks up a signal from extra-terrestrial intelligences.

Polymnia at Wavendon garden - my choir's concert went very well, thank you, and it was a lovely afternoon for a picnic in Cleo Laine's garden.

The Americans - ingeniously and carefully scripted drama series, about undercover KGB agents in 1980s America and the FBI agent on their tail who just happens to live across the street. Remarkable how it makes you sympathise with everybody in turn - right up to the point where they do something awful.

Les revenants (English title The Returned, but this doesn't carry the double meaning of the French) - fascinating, creepy and very compelling.

Spies, novel by Michael Frayn -  super book. What I've never seen so well done, not even in The Go-Between which it partially resembles - is the exploration of the confused (to adult eyes) world of a child, in which what is real is both fluid (do they really think Keith's mother is a German spy, or do they know they're playing a game?) and subject to social pressure (especially the dominance of the more affluent, more assured older boy).

The Art of Asking - TED talk by Amanda Palmer - to which I was pointed by (draft) course materials for a new OU course The Networked Practitioner. I suspect I wouldn't like her music at all ("punk cabaret"?) but this is a very good and powerful talk about the risk of trust: her experience of asking her fans to support her - physically (crowd-surfing and couch-surfing) and economically (through Kickstarter). It's not all as beautiful as she makes out, of course, as comes out in her interview with Jon Ronson; but this is a gem of a sermon.

Romanza - extraordinary steel band version of the slow movement of Vaughan Williams Symphony number 5, commissioned as part of Jeremy Deller's English Magic installation at the Venice Biennale.