Brief description
"The Search" is an opera, specifically a "net opera 2.0".
What is a "net opera 2.0"? It is an opera that uses a computer network for you to participate in it.
Opera is sung theater. These are represented in opera theaters and sometimes in other physical areas in order to make it accessible to a larger audience.
In classical opera, the public should remain silent and as quiet as possible so as not to disturb what is happening.
But what if, instead, by some kind of technology, the public is allowed to participate in the play, sing and / or make music with an instrument or beating pans, act with a character of his own? "The Search" is an opera where it is no longer possible to stay sitting only perceiving a work, in "The Search" we all must DO.
A little more technical:
How does the "Search" to allow anyone who wants to contribute to the work his character, his music and / or his singing,
His performance, his dialogues and with that contribute to the story that "The Search" narrates?
To achieve this, it is an opera that uses computer network technology. Then there is software that:
Is connected to a computer network.
Which generates a virtual space in 3D.
Which allows you to build a character that must control it by emitting, some kind of sound and / or singing, these sounds
Are in turn transmitted by the network and listened to by other people, who like you are connected at the same time to the same scene and between all and you with those sounds that each generates, they are building the music.
That allows you to speak by microphone with whom you want and with that you are contributing dialogues.
It allows you to interact in various ways with that virtual world.
The computer network technology allows all these interactions and that is why it is an " net opera" and is the cyberculture of the web 2.0, the web of social networks, the web where Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Sound Cloud and other platforms that invite us all the time to contribute our own contents: texts, photos, music, etc. And let's not forget video games too
Multiplayer in network, like the "Counter Strike", to mention one of the most popular, that with its visual elements, sound and the possibilities that its creators have programmed for the avatars, make that all our contributions are covered in the general narrative of the game.
It is from these three places, the technology of computer networks, the cyberculture of the web 2.0 and the narrative mechanisms of the Multiplayer online video games, that an opera like "The Search" can be conceived.
Description not so brief but a little deeper
"The Search" is an opera, that is to say theater sung. But it's also a videogame. Does this obey a fashion of postmodernism?
Not at all, the generative idea was to perform an opera where the spectator here is his protagonist contributing his performance, music, narrative and with these contributions part of the work is constructed in real time.
The central problem is how to achieve these goals. My research and reflections led me to conclude that using a network
of computers in which interactive virtual worlds are generated and to which anyone who has access can connect
The internet would be a suitable technological solution. In addition to this, observing the behaviors of the digital characters in the videojuegos multijugador on line, I have seen that all of them respond to the narrative that the videojuego proposes to them in spite of that each player behaves in the way that he desires, but these behaviors are not totally free, conditioned and limited by the visual elements that immerse the digital character in a world and in a context, the sound elements that fulfill the same role.
In addition their possible interactions are delimited by the programming code that controls them.
But with this alone we do not have opera, at most we have an online multiplayer videojuego. We can affirm that the interaction of digital character that an Internet user controls is theatrical performance, it would be necessary to consider opera that the dialogues were sung and the idea is that the Internet users with their digital characters did that, but how to achieve it considering that the vast majority of potential netizens who connect are not musicians? And even supposing that they were, how would it be coordinated if all of them contribute their own music at the same time?
My solution is to: program the digital characters so that the acceleration of their movement is interactive with any type of sound that the web surfer must emit to move his character in space. For this it is necessary to capture these sounds through a microphone to enter the computer and is according to the programming code to do this task.
In the virtual social worlds of "The Search" these sounds in turn are transmitted by the network and heard by all Internet users connected to the scene at that time and this is considered the music of that scene at that time. Everyone emits and everyone listens to what they all do. In this way the music and the own work are of collective and collaborative creation.
Two issues arise here: if the netizens can emit any kind of sound like this can be considered music?
The second question, no less important is, even considering that these sounds are music, what happens if nobody sings which is quite probable? If someone encouraged to sing because we would have opera but we must consider the contingency that this does not happen, my solution is that the characters of "The Search", known in the jargon of video games as NPC, dialogue with
The players always singing operatic arias that are my composition, except the inclusion of the song "Walker There is no Way" by Joan Manuel Serrat.
The first question still remains to be solved, how can all those sounds that Internet surfers emit can be considered music?
Modern composers of the twentieth century devoted part of their musical production to breaking classical musical conceptions in almost all parameters: sound, timbre, rhythm, forms, musical genres, determination and indeterminacy, means of execution, etc.
Some examples: Let us first cite Italian "noirists" like Luiggi Russolo who in 1913 developed an orchestra of instruments called "Intona Rumori" and wrote music for them. Instruments, which, as the name implies, emit what until then was considered noise.
In 1948 composers of the "concrete" movement, engraving, railway stations, factories, dripping quills, squeaking doors, material that they then process in the laboratory. In this way they seek to incorporate everyday sounds into a musical make.
You can give many examples are more, but what is it that makes any sound, especially those who were considered as noise, can now be considered musical? Simply the intentionality, that implies its selection, its inclusion at a certain moment, the intensity with which it is included, etc. All that and more makes any sound from being a mere casual event
In the world to be a sound in a musical work. One more example, in Edgar Varese's 1931 "Ionisation", the work is written for 33 percussion instruments and includes a siren like those of the factories and sounds without any treatment in "Ionisation", so what is the difference of That siren in her factory and the same siren in "Ionisation" (suppose it was taken out of the factory and used here)?
The only difference is that it is Varese's intention to include it in "Ionisation".
In short, we have in "The Search" an opera because in it are present the two essential elements that define it as such:
Acting through the interaction of Internet users and their digital characters with the virtual worlds of the work.
Music produced by the same Internet users and also by the NPC.
But we are in a special class of opera that I call "net opera 2.0", net because with the computer networks the interaction of the internauts in the virtual worlds is allowed and some of them are social and "2.0" because it is the cyberculture Of the web 2.0, the web of social networks, the web where Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Sound Cloud and other platforms that invite us all the time
To contribute our own contents: texts, photos, music, etc