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Digital Guqin Musuem : a virtual model in sl

Digital Guqin Museum :: mini-concert and talk by Swann Jie, at Metalab Rennes, Festival Transmusicale 2008 3rd Dec 2008, 13h30 – 14h30

Speaker, Live demo : Swann Jie Participants: Sl avatars Rl people in Rennes, France

Swannjiejie will be in the audience, taking pictures

=== Introduction:

This is the Guqin, oldest hand plucked string instrument from China. It is 3000 years old. Made of wood for small intimate concerts. It is an intrument of the literati – therefore it is one of the most well documented musical instrument native to China. This includes : the music; the lyric; and the notation and history pertaining to the instrument.

Currently there are around 200 players in China, and many more starting to learn. It has been declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity since 2003 by Unesco.

On the spaceship the voyager, there is a gold record – which is entitled “Murmurs of the earth”, these are sound samplings from Earth in search of outer space intelligent life forms. The longest piece of music on the disk is the piece from China, using the guqin instrument. It is 7mn23sec long, entitled “Flowing Water”.

I will play this for you now through the Digital Guqin. The original music was recorded by Guan Ping Hu, master player no.1.

Swann jie plays the guqin

Now I will play another piece, a very short piece, 3mn. It is recorded by the Master player MeiRiQiang, As you listen, ask yourselves this, when do you think this composition was created?

Swann jie plays the guqin

when it finishes she asks the audience, when? Etc afterwards

Now I will play the last piece, it’s a piece entitled Barbarian Reed Pipes in 18sections, it’s a piece that expresses the sadness of a princess who had been married to outer Mongolia. This piece is 20mn long; recorded by the Master player Wu Wenguang – professor at Beijing Conservatory of Music.

Swann jie plays the guqin

I started the project of Digital Guqin Musuem in Secondlife, because I would like to promote and develop the Guqin art and culture through Digital Media. Through this method of presentation, I renew the enjoyment of playing guqin music and enable ease of access to the instrument and provide a location and time for experiencing the instrument by yourself and with others online.

I could recreate ideal settings, ancients ones and contemporary ones. We could share this music making with others at anytime. Of course, nothing replaces the real learning and playing of the instrument, this is only the first step. I want to introduce people to this art and culture through the microscopic window of Secondlife, and bringing it to Real Life.

The fact that I am talking to you today, as part of the real life Festival of Transmusicale – it is already a bona fide step of creating a link from Secondlife towards Real life.

For now, I have built one small prototype of the instrument – there are many types of design and models in real life – this model is called the HunDun – the primordial one, the most simple version. One straight piece of wood without any decorations. HunDun. In real life; I have made a Half Hundun, and this one – very popular form is Confucious Qin, this one the Banana Leave Qin; there are over 200 models seen so far.

The Digital Guqin Museum is housed on the land of Daiyu, thanks to our sponsor Mr;WangXiang, who has invited us to settle on his land, and he has created a group called “Friends of Digital Guqin Museum”. Currently we have three main projects on course :

1/ guqin concerts; (on-going)

2/ building of the real life prototype : Mobile Digital Guqin TinyHouse Museum. (we are about to begin this part)

3/ Fashion for Guqin Elegant Gatherings (this part will come later)

Right now on the Digital Guqin Museum land, we have a club house, a mobile Digital Guqin Musuem TinyHouse, and a Graffiti Wall where everyone could contribute their drawings and photos and play together. We also have giant size media screen where we could see videos together. There are many YouTubes of guqin players available.

For now, I use the Secondlife platform as a virtual model for the real thing to come. We start small, from the sl model and begin building in real life the TinyHouse Digital Guqin Musuem. The sl TinyHouse is modelled roughly after the true dimension of the envelope of a Tumbleweed TinyHouse. This small volume does not require a building permit. So, from Secondlife, we could experiment with real life immediately and we could tow it anywhere we want. Of course, each place we stop, we would give a live demo of Digital Guqin concert and show a real life instrument and if budget permitting we could invite a real life guqin player to perform for us.

The TinyHouse you see here is a true scale building, here is a sample of a small cube. In real life; it is 11cm3 made of recycled aluminium beer cans.

So, if anyone is interested in helping build this Mobile Digital Guqin TinyHouse Museum, please IM me and we will get together to see how we could rocket ourselves out from Secondlife to Real life.

The real TinyHouse Digital Guqin Museum will be exhibited in public and we will travel in real life from city to city, giving Digital Guqin concerts, and if possible invite a real life guqin player to give punctual concerts.

Thank you for your kind attention.

If anyone would like to try the Guqin, please don’t hesitate do come up and see if you like it?

=== More :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVp9GpliuXM Mao HuiSheng http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivdsmv66KcU Cui HuiXin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_guqin_players http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record

Adventures of sl Digital Guqin Museum Project and rl Digital Guqin Studio, http://swannbb.blogspot.com

rl Digital Guqin Studio http://hosting.zkm.de/MIDIguqin/stories/storyReader$63 http://www.archimuse.com/mw2006/bios/au_395015835.html http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/Shuen-git+Chow/13880.html rl records of events attended http://mayasun.idv.tw/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=35

sl Digital Guqin Museum Project http://slurl.com/secondlife/Daiyu%20Island/202/45/4070/?title=Digital%20Guqin%20Instrument&msg=play%20digital%20guqin! www.swannjie.com

sl + rl mixed events http://sldirect.blogspot.com/2008/11/transmusicales-ralits-mixtes-2008.html