23 Virtual Worlds An Ethnomusicological Perspective

The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality
Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard (ed.)
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199826162.001.0001
Published: 2013 Online ISBN: 9780199984985 Print ISBN: 9780199826162
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CHAPTER
23 Virtual Worlds: An Ethnomusicological Perspective 

Trevor S. Harvey
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199826162.013.037 Pages 378–391

Published: 16 December 2013
Abstract
This chapter investigates the coconstruction of musical identities among audiences and performers in
the virtual world of Second Life. Within this digital environment, musicians, rendered as digitally
constructed avatars, perform “live” concerts in front of audience members, each represented by their
own avatar. Through an ethnographic account of live music performances in Second Life, including
interviews with musicians and audience members, this chapter will explore the layered identities of
Second Life participants as they socially construct their digital avatar personas within the virtual world.
Musical personas of Second Life participants, like real-world identities, are constantly in ux and
incomplete, and are constructed in the process of musical performances. Musical avatars, both of
musicians and audiences, are thus complex intersubjective and intrasubjective mediators of the
meaningful sociomusical experiences that draw participation into virtual worlds.
Keywords: Virtual worlds, Second Life, musical personas, identity, avatars, ethnography
Subject: Applied Music, Music and Media, Music
Series: Oxford Handbooks
Collection: Oxford Handbooks Online
ONE Wednesday night, while searching for live music performances in the virtual world of Second Life, I
walked into MJ’s Blues and Dance Club, a live music venue that billed itself as a “Classic Rock-n-Roll, Blues,
Jazz, and All Around Good Time Entertainment Establishment.” Looking around the digitally constructed
room from the perspective of my avatar—my computer-rendered, human-like body that indicates my
presence and place within the virtual world—I observed the club was a spacious hall boasting a large dance
oor and two stages. One stage, out tted with turntables and other equipment for DJs, was empty, but on
the other stage stood Ictus Belford, a thirty-something male avatar, who was wearing blue jeans, a long-
sleeve T-shirt, and sneakers (see gure 23.1). As Ictus sang Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,”
accompanying himself on his acoustic Takamine guitar, the audience of about 20 avatars chatted (via text
messages) and danced, occasionally adding Linden Dollars (Second Life currency) to Ictus’s tip jar, which sat
conspicuously at the front of the stage. Covering the wall behind Ictus were pictures of other virtual-world
musicians who have performed at MJ’s, a testament to the club’s prominence in the live music scene of
Second Life. After singing several cover tunes, Ictus introduced one of his own original compositions:
I’m going to do a song I wrote. It’s about Second Life and my rst few days’ experience in this wild,
wild world. This song is called “No More Real Life.”
There was an immediacy to Ictus’s voice, similar to the intimate sound of a closely miked radio DJ, that
suggested a closer proximity between our avatars in the digitally constructed space than was visually

evident and that did not at all match the cavernous appearance of the club. This discrepancy between what I
was seeing and what I was hearing was perhaps even more pronounced because of the arti cial reverb that
p. 379 was added to Ictus’s vocals. As with his voice, there was a clarity and presence to the acoustic, steel-
string guitar, suggesting the utilization of a piezoelectric pickup device that allows a guitar to be plugged
directly into a personal computer. Indeed, as I sat in my bedroom in Florida, controlling my avatar with my
mouse and keyboard while peering into my computer screen, Ictus was more than a thousand miles away in
Oklahoma, singing into a microphone connected to his computer, which projected his voice and guitar in
real time through an Internet-based audio-streaming channel into the virtual club where our avatars stood
separated only by the short rise of the virtual stage upon which his avatar was performing.
Figure 23.1
Ictus Belford performing at MJʼs Blues and Dance Club.
Live music performances, such as the one described above, are common events within Second Life; multiple
clubs and venues feature live musicians or DJs at any hour of the day (or night), any day of the week. Within
these venues, participants dance, sing, and converse, mirroring “real-world” music-oriented sociality. To
an ethnomusicologist like me, interested in lived musical experiences, live music concerts in Second Life
present a compelling environment for investigating how musical phenomena play an important part of
meaning-making in the social life of virtual-world participants. The temporality of music and the physical
nature of sound (concepts further discussed in Knakkergaard, chapter 24 in this volume) are critical issues
in understanding the vital role of musical activities in virtual worlds. By exploring the manifestation of
“virtual” concerts within an avatar-based virtual world, I seek to understand how musicians and audiences
experience “liveness” in the context of computer-mediated, digital environments. I posit that the value
placed on live performances within Second Life suggests a particular e cacy to aurality in actualizing social
p. 380 relationships within virtual space such that real-time musical performances serve to bridge “virtual”
and “actual” experiences in so-called “virtual worlds.”
Music in Virtual Worlds
Second Life is a graphically rich, user-designed environment within which human participants interact via
avatars. To even the most casual observer, music plays a central role in the social life of Second Life
participants. The immense importance of music to the design, marketing, and user experiences in virtual
worlds is evident from the proliferation of music-themed virtual worlds throughout the rst decade of the

twenty- rst century. From massively multiplayer online social games (e.g., Popmundo) to 3D digital spaces
for social listening (e.g. 3DJay and MixM8), music-oriented virtual worlds attract users into online
environments through attempts to draw out meaningful sociomusical participatory action.
Participants in virtual worlds such as Second Life tend to divide musical sounds into two broad categories: (1)
“live” music, meaning music that is controlled in real time by human actors and streamed into the digital
space with minimal latency; and (2) nonlive, preprogrammed music. Live music events, as de ned by Second
Life participants, include not only live musicians, whose o ine performances are simultaneously streamed
into the virtual world, but also DJs, who generally play commercially released, prerecorded music, but
socially interact with their virtual-world audience in real time as they select, introduce, and play back
recordings. Nonlive musical sounds include constant music streams established by owners of land parcels as
a soundtrack for their virtual space. The employment of such ambient music provides soundscapes to the
user-constructed landscapes of Second Life, much the way that background music is used in shopping malls,
elevators, and other public and commercial spaces. While the sources of both live and ambient music are
located outside of Second Life and streamed into the virtual world via third-party audio streaming services
such as SHOUTcast, users have also created virtual musical instruments, allowing avatars to simulate
musical performance not only through the animation of the avatar, but also by scripting the automatic
playback of musical sound associated with that instrument (see gure 23.2). While these various categories
of musical experience within virtual worlds utilize di erent technologies for enacting musical
performances, they each articulate ways in which musical behavior a ects perceptions of being “in” the
virtual world. Of these categories, however, only live music performances are conceived of as social events
—circumscribed times and spaces de ned as socially interactive gathering places for participant avatars.
As with the many text-based virtual worlds, or Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs), that preceded it (see Curtis
1996; 2001), Second Life stands apart from other graphically rich virtual worlds in that the software
developers endowed Second Life with no speci c purpose or meaning for the users. While World of Warcraft,
Entropia Universe (which includes the music-themed Rocktropia), and many other 3D-rendered, avatar-
p. 381 based virtual worlds were conceived and developed as games with predetermined goals and
achievement-based rewards, Second Life o ers no such goal-oriented purpose for its users. This distinction
is clearly articulated in both personal conversations and published reports, where Second Life participants
repeatedly and adamantly reject the suggestion that they are playing a “game” (see, for example,
Boellstor 2008; Kirkpatrick 2007). Thus, Second Life participants create meaning for their own existence by
engaging in social practices connected to or extending from their “real life” interests. Live music concerts,
which are among the most popular attractions in Second Life, often serve to draw participants toward, and
provide an environment for social engagement, leading to the development of a rich and active musical
culture within the virtual world.
Figure 23.2

The author (known as Collyier Heberle in Second Life) playing a Bach prelude on the virtual pipe organ at Balboa Park, San Diego.
Ethnomusicology and Digital Culture
The founding of ethnomusicology as a discipline in the middle of the twentieth century brought a “new
emphasis upon the relationship of music to culture” and institutionalized a branch of musicological
research whose focus was not so much on the “de nition of music styles…[but on] an understanding of
music as a human phenomenon” (Merriam 1960, 107–108). In pursuit of this goal, Alan Merriam, a
p. 382 founding member of the discipline of ethnomusicology, sought to distinguish the existing humanistic focus
on musical works (product) from the social-scienti c concern of human behavior and social activity
(process) (1964). The process of music-making by human actors, rather than the resulting art-object of
musical production, continues to be a central focus for ethnomusicological research today.
As Merriam and others sought to establish ethnomusicology as an academic discipline in the 1950s, they
saw their e orts as an evolution of cross-cultural musicological research that had been going on for more
than half of a century. The emergence of ethnomusicology as a social-scienti c practice around the turn of
the twentieth century was a response to new research in acoustics, developments in audio engineering, and
the evolution of recording technology (for example, see Ellis 1885; Gilman and Fewkes 1891; Hornbostel and
Sachs 1914). Throughout the twentieth century, these areas of techno-scienti c knowledge—and the
musical machines developed therefrom—became increasingly vital in de ning and determining the
research activities of Western ethnomusicologists who continued to focus on traditional (i.e.,
technologically “primitive”), non-Western cultures. Criticizing what he identi ed as colonial practices and
attitudes related to the technologically privileged position of ethnomusicologists, René Lyslo (1997) called
for an “ethnomusicology of technoculture” to expand critical engagement with music-cultural practices in
relation to media and information technology. Still, the study of new technologies pertaining to
sociomusical life within emergent digital cultures has only recently received some attention within the eld
of ethnomusicology (see Miller 2012). By applying an ethnographic lens to musical activity in Second Life, I
hope to raise awareness of the relationship between sociomusical life and Internet-oriented digital
technology within virtual worlds and, on a more general level, foreground important ways of
conceptualizing musical performance and participation within our twenty- rst-century, digitally mediated
experiences.
Experiencing the “Virtual” in Virtual Worlds
After introducing his song “No More Real Life” during his set at MJ’s Blues and Dance Club, Ictus began to
strum his guitar in a medium-slow tempo. Starting on a D-major chord and then moving to a D-minor
chord, Ictus produced an unexpected shift in tonality that, together with the relatively slow pacing of the
song, presented a sense of ambiguity to the listener. The unsettled harmonic quality of the guitar part
seemed tting, an appropriate accompaniment to his descriptive lyrical retelling of his initial experiences in
the disembodied realm of Second Life and the complex relationship between online experiences and o ine
perceptions of virtual worlds (see Weblink: Audio 23.1):

I was sitting at my desktop looking at this cartoon girl
She was telling me she wants to give this Second Life a whirl
p. 383 Wondering what the hell I was doing here
Oh my God, I’m ying somewhere
No more real life
I want my second life
No more real life
Gotta have my second life
Initiation narratives that communicate the di culties and wonderment that new participants experience
when entering a virtual world for the rst time are commonly shared both within and outside of Second Life.
In the opening paragraph of his monograph, Coming of Age in “Second Life,” anthropologist Tom Boellstor
compared his initial experience with Second Life to the classic Malinowskian ethnographic description of
entering the eld:
Imagine yourself suddenly set down surrounded by all your gear, alone on a tropical beach close to
a native village while the launch or dinghy which has brought you sails away out of sight. You have
nothing to do, but to start at once on your ethnographic work….This exactly describes my rst
initiation into eld work in Second Life.
(Boellstor 2008, 3)
Indeed, entering Second Life for the rst time is a strange and disorienting experience. After choosing a
name (which also serves as a username for logging in to the Second Life servers), a new resident must then
create her avatar, the digitally rendered body that represents the participant’s being within the virtual space
and the agent through which she interacts with that world. Special computer code, known as a physics
engine, establishes the laws and constraints by which the movement and interaction of digital bodies within
virtual space must abide. This visually based simulation of physicality underlies the conceptualization of
virtual worlds as “immersive” environments. Such immersion, however, is often disrupted as a new
resident develops an understanding of the “physical” presence of her own body (or avatar) in reference to
other digital objects. Learning to control the avatar’s movement in space, through the arrow keys on the
computer keyboard, can be a di cult and frustrating process. The shortcomings of the computer keyboard
as a uid human-computer interface are readily apparent as the new resident struggles to orient herself
within the virtual space, creating a rupture between self and physical environment, and avatar and virtual
environment. The disorienting experience described by Boellstor is rea rmed by Ictus in the second verse
to “No More Real Life”:
And then she said I needed hair

Well, I was thinking: who cares
I hadn’t been here just a day or two
Since I got into this room I can’t nd my way out of here
In both of these examples, Boellstor and Ictus focus on the ocularcentric manifestations of being within
Second Life—they perceive and interpret their virtual experience as a visually simulated world. Indeed, it is
p. 384 this visual representation of intended actions (or perhaps even more so, unintended actions) that
accentuates the disembodied nature of living in a digital environment and distinguishes virtual worlds like
Second Life from other socially oriented networked spaces (Krotoski et al. 2009). This ocularcentric
environment accentuates the sense of disembodiment within virtual worlds, where computer-generated
objects, including one’s very own avatar, always remain exterior to one’s bio-physical body. Thus, the term
“virtuality,” generally understood to mean “almost” or a “simulation,” is commonly used to describe

social life and interaction in “virtual worlds.”
These common discourses of virtual reality suggest an experience that is separate and distinct from our
“real lives,” a space in which fantastical desires may be played out in ways impossible or improbable in the
“real world.” There are certainly elements to Second Life that support this perspective of the virtual: as Ictus
sings in the rst verse of his song, “Oh my God, I’m ying somewhere.” Further investigation, however,
reveals that the virtual is not separate from, but rather embedded within, “real life” experiences, and
musical performance can play a vital role in actualizing virtual-world experiences. As I endeavor to
articulate the relationship between the virtual and the actual within live music performances in Second Life,
I follow Steve Woolgar in his call for developing “a much more sophisticated appreciation of the relations
between online and o ine” (2002b, 8). In the introductory chapter to his edited volume, Virtual Society?
(2002a), Woolgar o ers “ ve rules of virtuality” as analytic tools for investigating the relationship between
virtuality and actuality. One of these rules, in particular, deserves mention in relation to Second Life live
music events, namely that virtual technologies supplement rather than substitute for real activities.
Live Music Concerts in Second Life
Ictus was initially drawn to Second Life for social, not musical, reasons. “I hated it,” Ictus said to me when
describing his initial experience with Second Life. Controlling his avatar, his virtual body, was frustrating, as
was the increased demand on computing power and Internet bandwidth, causing lag (temporal delays)
inherent in such graphically rich, but geographically distributed, environments.
I couldn’t move too quick, just like a walking stick

She called it lag, I thought, “It’s more like a drag”
And then she crashed and left me standing there
All alone holding her bag
No more real life
I want my second life.
Soon, however, Ictus discovered the live music scene and began playing concerts. Five years later, despite
his initial frustrations, Ictus maintains a permanent residence in a contemporary house on a private island,
p. 385 all paid for by his earnings (mostly from tips) as a musician in Second Life. While none of the songs in his
repertoire are as re exive of the Second Life experience as his song “No More Real Life,” this song is
indicative of Ictus’s attempt to bridge the “virtual” and “actual” through musical expression in Second Life.
Through this song—or more speci cally, through live performances of this song for audiences of avatars—
Ictus expresses not only the disjuncture of disembodied experiences in virtual worlds but a desire to
actualize his virtual-world experiences.
According to anthropologist Marilyn Strathern, the term “virtual” has undergone “an intriguing
metamorphosis from the concrete to the abstract” (Strathern 2002, 305). The root word from which
“virtual” descends, “virtue,” which references the qualities and essence of a thing, has been overshadowed
by emphasizing the visual simulations of virtual worlds. Unlike the physical separation experienced through
digitally based visual simulation, the materiality of digitally processed and distributed sound via
performances by musicians such as Ictus is reconstructed “live” and literally embodied through the process
of hearing. Thus, the sonic aspect of live music concerts is one of several actualizing mechanisms for Second
Life audiences.
Within the context of virtuality, we may understand actuality as two closely related concepts: the rst,

informed by the French word actualité, implies that actuality is something that exists now, something that is
current; and the second indicates that that which is actual emerges through action—suggesting an active
process to actualization. Thus, while Second Life participants may experience disembodied distantiation
from the virtual world in which their avatar resides, musical participation can serve to transcend this
separation by actualizing the social experience—an active practice of making technologically mediated
sociomusical processes current and more immediate. The issue of immediacy in establishing privileged
modes of communication (e.g., face-to-face speech versus written communication versus computer-
mediated electronic messaging) has a long history in communication studies (see Sterne 2003). More
recently, however, scholars have challenged assumptions that communication involving a lower degree of
technical complexity is any less mediated than communication within networks of digital devices (see Inoue
2003).
For Second Life participants, live concerts o er a certain amount of temporal immediacy between
performers and audience members. The simultaneity of social action allows musicians to simulate familiar
experiences of playing for audiences in “real life.” The musicians I have met in Second Life did not perform
rst in a virtual world, but rather had o ine experience performing on stage in front of audiences before
discovering the possibility of live concerts in virtual worlds. Accustomed to conventional behaviors of
audiences in relation to their performances (e.g., clapping), the natural inclination for these musicians was
to expect certain responses from the avatars attending virtual-world performances, leading to a
comparison of their online performances to o ine experiences.
In an interview by Slim Warrior on the Metaverse TV show Amped Up, Damien Carbonell discussed the
mental shift musicians encounter when moving from o ine performance venues to computer-mediated
1
p. 386 virtual worlds. Slim Warrior (aka SlimGirlFat), herself an active musician in virtual worlds and other
online spaces, asked Damien to relate how the “buzz” musicians get from performing in front of “real life”
audiences compares to live performances in virtual worlds. For Damien, the lack of aural feedback from the
audience was perhaps the biggest barrier to perceiving temporal immediacy between himself and the
audience:
It takes some getting used to—going from a real stage and then going to the virtual world where
you can’t really read the audience because you don’t hear the clapping, you don’t hear if they’re
holding full-length conversations with each other mid-song and not listening to you, you know,
you don’t really hear all of that. So, at rst it kind of feels like nobody’s paying attention because
you can’t hear anything and you’re so used to hearing the crowd. But after you adjust and kind of
gure out how to tell if people are enjoying themselves and things like that then, yeah, you can
really get a buzz o of it.
The “buzz” sought by musicians in live performance situations cannot be simulated in virtual worlds; it
must arise from actual sociality within that space. For musicians, such as Damien, developing modes of
sociomusical interaction between audience members and performers in virtual worlds is crucial to the
viability of “live” performances in digital space. Understanding and manipulating multimodal
communicative action in virtual worlds—the aural, visual, and textual—is crucial to successful live
performances. As Damien explained to Slim Warrior in the same interview:
And it is that multi-tasking thing where, you know, perhaps in a live performance you’re not
listening to what they’re talking about, but with Second Life you’re actually reading what people are
saying and it gets you a chance to be…you know, it becomes a little more personal because you’re
recognizing people’s names.
You know, what I think it does also, it gets your fans and your support a chance to get to know you
through your music on a far more personal level than if you were doing a [real-life] gig.

That’s something I’ve enjoyed a lot about Second Life is the more personal feel to it. That’s why
when I started doing it I kept saying, over and over again, that I’m not putting on a concert, you
know, I’m doing a show. There’s a whole di erent atmosphere to it. It’s more like I want people to
feel like we’re sitting around a camp re jamming. You know, I don’t want people to feel like
they’re looking at me on an untouchable stage 20 feet away. It’s a whole di erent atmosphere.
The desire to create social settings aimed at enhancing or enabling the development of intimate social
interactions within virtual worlds is frequently expressed by musicians in Second Life. Just as in mainstream
popular music, virtual-world songs often serve as a vehicle for relating romantic encounters and exploring
the meaning of such relationships, as demonstrated in Ictus’s “No More Real Life.” Having watched friends
engage in online romance, another Second Life musician, Rich Desoto, wrote “Avatar Girl,” a song in which
p. 387 he remarks upon the development of romantically inclined intimate relationships that sometimes follow
the “hyperpersonal” (Walther 1996) social interaction possible within virtual worlds (see Weblink Audio
23.2):
I’m in love with an avatar girl

She looks so good in this virtual world
I watch her dance, I watch her talk with her friends
And when she can she cuddles up with me again
Doo n’ doo, doo n’ doo doo doo
What is this place I have fallen in to?
So many things here that I can do…
When I arrived it seemed oh so strange
But something kept me coming back again
Doo n’ doo, doo n’ doo doo doo
My point here is not to sensationalize social interaction within virtual worlds by focusing on romantic
a airs, but rather to establish the actuality of intimacy experienced in virtual worlds. Like Damien, Rich
believes that live music performances in virtual worlds can provide an opportunity for close interaction
among performers and audiences. In a personal interview I conducted with Rich, he explained how playing
for o ine audiences di ers from virtual-world audiences and the bene ts he nds as a performer to the
modes of social engagement o ered in the digital realm:
As you can tell probably from my show this morning, I like to really interact [with the audience].
And there’s maybe times where I want to just go into a musical vamp so I can do that interaction
and respond to the chat or talk about speci c event items or…the hostesses or the people in the
audience…And there’s a lot to be said about how your audiences and the people that interact with
you understand you as a performer and you as a person…What I don’t get…I don’t get the facial
expressions and the nuances from body language, but I do get the comments and…I think we don’t
often as musicians get that in real time. By the time the feedback comes, it’s in the event of, you
know, a letter or an e-mail or a lack of sales or…it’s always a residual feedback, but this is an
immediate…like you said, more intimate.
Rich’s statement on immediacy here is not merely an observation of the temporal compression made
available via communication technology, but also speaks to a social intimacy that challenges our
assumptions of virtuality as a highly mediated, technical process. Damien expressed it this way:

I get touched a lot when I’m playing shows, especially when I’m playing an original [song] and
there’s people out there typing the lyrics to a song that I wrote in local chat. It’s very touching.
p. 388
Actualizing Online Sociality through Virtual Musical Participation
Back at MJ’s Blues and Dance Club, where I rst encountered Ictus, he was not the only one performing on
stage during his set. He was accompanied by Carrie Laysan, his then Second Life wife and manager—and the
inspiration of the song “No More Real Life.” In her performances with Ictus, Carrie did not produce audible
music; rather she would “sing” in (text) chat, while her avatar strummed her psychedelic “spork”—a
multicolored, guitar-shaped instrument modeled after the hybrid spoon-fork utensil (see gure 23.3).
As an audience member at concerts featuring Ictus accompanied by Carrie, only Ictus’s guitar and voice
were streamed into the virtual-world music venue and relayed by my computer speakers. But both Ictus’s
and Carrie’s avatars stood on stage, strumming their associated virtual instruments. Despite not producing
actual sound, Carrie played an active and important role in actualizing the social experience at Ictus’s live
concerts, typing the lyrics to the songs in the chat as Ictus sang them. At times, Carrie’s “backup vocals”
enticed audience members to participate, and they, too, would “sing” along with the song in chat. When I
p. 389 asked Carrie how she started this process of virtual “musicking” (Small 1998) she explained:
It started with me typing lyrics. I’ve always kinda just sung in chat along with him, just not all of
the words. [Ictus] had several fans who were Korean…well, Korean and [from] other countries…but
a couple of the Koreans thanked me [after the show] because they said they could understand
better when I typed the lyrics.
So, I dunno, I just hopped on stage one day and said I was gonna play backup…and sing backup, and
then when people started asking me to type the lyrics—more and more people asked me to type
lyrics—I did. More and more. And then people started expecting me to get on stage and type. It
feels weird to be “singing” from the audience. So then I asked [a friend] to make my spork pretty
since I was using it so much.
Figure 23.3

Ictus Belford, guitar, and Carrie Laysan, spork, performing at Crystal Sands.
Carrie’s participation within the context of Ictus’s concerts again raises questions about liveness, virtuality,
and the nature of musical performance. The “virtual musicking” of Carrie’s avatar, however—what we may
perceive as a representation of musical performance—is hardly di erent from the simulated musical
movements of Ictus’s avatar. The actions of both avatars fall within what Kiri Miller calls “schizophonic
performances” (Miller 2009). Building upon R. Murray Schafer’s concept of “schizophonia,” a “nervous”
term he employed to emphasize “the split between an original sound and its electroacoustical transmission
or reproduction” (Schafer 1977, 90), Miller utilizes “schizophonic performances” to characterize what
Philip Auslander describes as musical practices “in which the visual evidence of performance [has] no
relation to the production of sound” (Auslander 1999, 86). As a technologically mediated musical
experience, schizophonia arises in response to the “socially and historically produced…categories of the live
and the recorded [that] are de ned in a mutually exclusive relationship” (Wurtzler 1992, 89). Generally
accepted conceptions of “liveness,” Steve Wurtzler explains, depend upon both temporal simultaneity and
spatial copresence, as opposed to the temporal anteriority and spatial absence of recordings.
Liveness within Second Life, however, is not only conceptualized along conditions of spatial and temporal
relationships between musician and audience, but is also understood as a socially interactive process of
musical—not necessarily sonic—communication that may be extended to Carrie’s performative practices.
Through her performances, Carrie mediated social interaction among audience members and between the
audience and Ictus. Carrie’s role as a Second Life musician reveals not an “almost” musician nor the
“simulation” of musical behavior, but rather the exhibition of virtual musicianship as an extension of the
virtue of sociomusical activity into live music settings in Second Life.
Within the virtual world of Second Life, the animated actions of digital bodies can have an actualizing e ect.
Drawing upon Deleuze’s ideas of virtuality and actuality, William Echard argues that there are multiple
activities of musical practice that o er “devices for building sensitivity to [and perhaps actualize] the
virtual” (Echard 2006, 10). Just as Ictus’s real-life guitar serves to “actualize music as sound” (2006, 11),
Carrie’s spork and textual “singing” are technological apparatuses that provide a means of actualizing the
avatar as a musician. Similarly, the textual chatting and animated dance moves of the audience’s avatars
help to actualize their participatory role in this sociomusical event.
“I love the audience participation!” Carrie told me.

p. 390 “Do you [ever] nd it intrusive?” I asked.
“Nooooo. Noooo, I love it! I love being a part of the show and getting [the audience] into it.”
“You see in real life, bands stop playing and let the audience sing,” Ictus added. “Do you know
what a thrill that is for that band?”
Carrie continued, “Sometimes he plays a chord and I type the lyrics to the rst line of the song
and…Bam, they go nuts!”

Conclusion
Virtual worlds such as Second Life function as important environments for Internet-based social interaction.
As our daily lives, both personal and professional, become increasingly enmeshed in digitally mediated
sociality, virtual worlds, I believe, can provide insight for understanding how music and aurality t into our
contemporary musical world. Linden Lab, the developer and owner of Second Life, established a relatively
open platform that not only allowed users to create the simulated, 3D environment in which they interact,
but also empowered Second Life residents to derive meaning from their own participatory practices—a
digitally rendered analog to so-called “real life.” Lacking a predetermined, goal-oriented purpose, Second
Life participants derive signi cance for their virtual existence through social interaction.
Second Life residents are not living in a parallel world separate from the “real world” in which we have
actual experiences, but rather, as suggested by Woolgar, physical and virtual activities are integrally
connected. For Second Life avatars, sociomusical participation is embedded in “real life” as much as it is a
part of the virtual world in which the live music event is taking place. As one audience member at a concert I
attended said: “Nothing like listening to Ictus and doing the laundry.”
Live music events in Second Life are a social space in which interpersonal relationships are actualized and
individual avatars negotiate the simultaneity of their social identity as both online and o ine social actors.
The embodied nature of musical experience creates an immediacy for social interaction that transcends
typical assumptions about the virtuality of computer-mediated communication through the realization of
meaningful social participation.
Notes
1. Slim Warriorʼs interview with Damien Carbonell was broadcast on Episode 4 of Amped Up and is available at
http://vimeo.com/22274629.
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