Second Front

Hey, Virtual Performance Fans

(and drinkers of grappa)
On the 13th of September, I went to Skopje, Macedonia as part of the UPGRADE! biennial world gathering of New Media artists, representing the Second Life node.

For this event, I did a live performance of “The Hansen-Ono Piano Method”, which is an extension of Al Hansen’s historic FLUXUS work “Yoko Ono Piano Drop”.  In this action, my avatar (Man Michinaga) sits at the piano, while rains of pianos, anvils, sheep, and other whatnot rain upon me with cacaphanous results.

My schedule had been run amok by rain, as it was an outdoor space.

However, at 10:30, we had a shot of Grappa, plugged in, and decided to do it.  Lizsolo was online, joined me, waved to the crowd, and joined me at the piano.

The image you see is from the site; we had about 100 or so people at the location, with projection and live EJ/VJing happening that night, being run in part by our Paris friends Karol and Toto Donat.

However, the screen went live, and I set loose torrents of Mario snow as Man sat calmly at the piano.  The crowd cheered.  The pianos began falling; woo hoo!  Lastly, I was wearing Gaz’hat, and the question marks rained from the sky.  All was well.

The show was ended at about 10 minutes by hitting the power switch, and I announced that I had crashed the sim.  This was actually closer to the truth, as when I relogged in later, my sim manager at Columbia, had told me I had brought my sim to a screeching halt. As Gazira would say, “Ahahahah!”

The other funny thing is that after performaing a piece “In the Spirit of Fluxus”, I had fallen asleep by mistake, and at 4 AM, my old friend Larry Miller of FLUXUS called to see what I was up to.  Preternaturally strange.

I got to the airport by the grace of FLUXUS.  Also, thanks to Bibbe OH (Hansen) for her input on this piece.

I’ll upload images soon.