May 26th 1982, Aston Villa defeated Bayern Munich in the European Cup final to become champions of Europe. The following season, Aston Villa defeated Barcelona over two legs to win the European Super Cup, which whilst not quite as impressive, was still a mighty success for The Villa.
This week in The Champions League, Bayern Munich completed a stunning 7-0 success over two legs against Barcelona to reach this year’s final. Buenos Aires isn’t in Europe so there are no European football games to link in, patience, I’m getting there.
What on earth has this got to do with Second Life I hear you ask, well other than an excuse for reliving Villa’s glory days, Barcelona, Bavaria, Birmingham, Buenos Aires, different parts of the globe all brought together in Second Life and in the case of Bavaria, Barcelona and Buenos Aires it also points to the latest episode of The Drax Files.
This week Draxtor Despres has published an edition where he talks to a couple who live in Spain, one half of the duo is originally from Spain and the other half originally from Buenos Aires, I believe. Together the couple play live music in Second Life and also play live music in Barcelona … see, there was a link! I’ll post the video at the end of the post but yet again Drax has done a fine job here and we have yet another good example of use cases for Second Life.
The male and female duo of Pupito Helstein and Lakua Arriaga have joined together to form a group called Engrama. They perform live in Second Life by using an electronic guitar, electronic drums and a mixer, which they then stream into Second Life. When it comes to Second Life some people play live and others use backing tracks, Engrama don’t use backing tracks, they prefer their music to be live and unique. They also prefer to play original songs and will, if the mood takes them, improvise and create their own new songs during their performances.
Howver Second Life is more than just a hobby for the duo and they spend a lot of time there, as well as charging a fee for their gigs they also have a store in Second Life called Ionic where they sell musical items, as you expect but they also sell stages, which they also create for their own sets as well as selling houses, furniture and some clothes too, they embrace Second Life in a big way.
Again what Draxtor manages to capture so well here is the inworld out of world mix and he manages this not just through video images of the happy couple in their home or walking in the hills, but also by the words from the duo. Lakua talks of how the avatars in their audience when they perform are real people, how she enjoys the positive feedback. There’s talk of how Second Life allows them to reach out to people all over the world, as opposed to playing in Barcelona where they will get a more localised audience.
That’s a good point, of course for large groups who go on world tours and get played worldwide on the radio it’s a different story, but there’s potential for global reach for musicians in Second Life, of course the technical limitations of audience size can be restrictive, but a band can reach into several regions of the world by participating in Second Life.
Overall it’s another excellent video from Draxtor, the variation of the reasons why people are using Second Life is one of the highlights of this series and Draxtor has managed to find another good use case here.
SLURL To Ionic Store: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Lotsawa/206/209/1602
I cannot believe how you tied all this in 🙂 Yes I am from Munich and my son now plays for the Americans [elementary school YMCA soccer] but I myself have no affiliation with any particular team. The assimilation pressures of this adopted country make it difficult to admit to soccer fandom…I am afraid of baseball bats beating me until I comply…..
I’m rather amused that so many Germans will be arriving in London for the final! I will have to support Bayern now because although not your team, I know you’re a proud Bavarian.