MachinimUWA IV: Glyph Graves' "Forest of Water"

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"Forests of Water" was a part of Glyph Graves multi-award winning 'Excerpts From Realities' entry to the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge. We see it here now for MachinimUWA IV: Art of the Artists, which unites the powerhouses of virtual worlds, Artists and Machinimatographers!

Entries to the L$300,000 MachinimUWA IV close on the 10th of November and looks for the creation of machinima featuring artworks that are part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge.

In Glyph's words: "Uses real time data in interaction with your avatar to create a sound scape composed by the individual rivers real time data mapped to sets of note samples."

He continues:

These are rivers. that run across our earth
as they rise and fall as they grow warmer and colder
in real time as they are now ..today.
they come into a virtual world creating a symphony
Each river is an instrument and each tree is a river.
they throw their shadow in SL
but not alone

To paraphrase, if a river flows in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

well...in this case no

it needs you to observe, to hear

and more

The tempo of each tree depends on how far you and the other avatars stand away from the any particular tree.

If you move too far away from any particular tree, it falls silent., waiting for you or another to come close
If you stand still among them you will hear the soft song of their rise and fall.

It contains multiple elements, the actual river and its physical characteristics today, now.
The real time height and temperature of rivers from across the US ( though the location is immaterial ..they could be from anywhere)
Each is an instrument that plays its individual song And it brings people from across the earth to interact with them to realise this piece.

I've purposely chosen to place then so the positions do not correspond to to their geographic location. In the same way the avatar next to you may be in Japan, Germany France, Australia or the US, these trees lay no claim to geographic position.
(Though if you want to see which rivers song they sing then look at the trees name)

Each tree is a full instrument. That is a large range of notes from a single instrument.
the trees are arranged, and the data is scaled to create the piece. So, while it uses data and each river has its song it is only data representation in its most limited sense. The object here is to create a work of art that has conceptual and aesthetic meaning.

Each song is however the rivers. I do not constrain the song it chooses within procedural guidelines though I have arranged them , scaled , positioned the instrument and note range.

Acknowledgements
Notes
Id like to thank Lorin Tone for the following note samples
Crystal sounds(Chords)
Flutes
French horn

Also used in this piece is
Notes by
Dreaming Pad - Jovica (freesound.org)
Ambiant Drone by DJ Chronos (freesound.org) highly modified and extended by me with audacity.