Virtual Wagner done right
(Received in my Oggle email inbox; I can’t vouch for its veracity.)
The Long (Conn.) Wagner Festival announces its campaign on PrickStarter to fund an exciting new production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, and we need your help!
This innovative production will be done with a virtual conductor (MaestroData – patent pending) and fully animated CGI singers, utilizing data from years of Wagner recordings and video and film footage of the great Wagner conductors processed with advanced motion capture and leading-edge artificial arrogance technology. This breakthrough technology allows us to fully digitize all the relevant gestures (even the silly, useless ones) that a Wagner conductor uses, providing a fully reproducible set of movements on which the orchestra can depend, without abuse or tantrums (although the commercialized version of the software will have those as optional modules). The use of GoogleGlass will allow the musicians to see the MaestroData system without the need for the audience to be distracted by its movements.
Our CGI singers are based on digitally sampled sounds from the major singers of the great European opera companies (or at least those where German is decently pronounced), while our visual animations allow us to present singers as the hotties that Wagner intended, avoiding the visual and political perils of ChubbyGate. Our Valkyries will be riding on the 3D helicopters that audiences have secretly craved.
If you too believe that wetware conductors and singers are more trouble than they’re worth, please join us in funding this important initiative. If, on the other hand, you think that it really doesn’t matter that a Wagner orchestra sounds like a kazoo with emphysema, you can fund this project instead.
Leave a Comment: