FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Cynthia Pannucci
718 816-9796


Jaron Lanier, "father of VR"
Gives Multimedia Performance
May 8, 1999 at 8pm
The Great Hall
Cooper Union, NYC
7 E. 7th Street @3rd Ave.
(tickets @ door: 6-8pm)
$20


Jaron Lanier, the musician and scientist who coined the term "Virtual Reality" brings two loves of his life, music and technology, together in "Echoes of Chromatophoria," a new form of live performance. This benefit event for Art & Science Collaborations, Inc. (ASCI), a New York-based, international non-profit organization, will take place in the Great Hall at The Cooper Union, Saturday, May 8 at 8pm. (tickets- $20 on sale from 6-8pm at Cooper Union)

"Echoes of Chromatophoria," combines deep use of virtual worlds with a multicultural aesthetic. What "deep" means is that the use of Virtual Reality isn't just a gimmick. In this multimedia performance work, virtual musical instruments that couldn't exist in reality are played, and "real" instruments become sophisticated interfaces to the exotic 3-D images of his virtual world.

Multicultural in his instrumental virtuosity, Lanier is unusual in that he brings a deeply intuitive and emotional style to his musical work, while at the same time pushing the boundaries of technology. He considers the complexity and delicacy in the design of musical instruments to have always been the highest form of technology - that they are in fact the inspiration computer technology has to follow.

In this performance, Jaron will make use of Virtual Worlds developed for last year's appearance by his group Chromatophoria at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. He will play a variety of instruments, including the Ba Wu, Seljeflote, Gu Zheng, Khaen, and Disklavier piano. A variety of sensors connect these to a Silicon Graphics-based real-time, large-screen video display.

About the name: "Chromatophoria" comes form Jaron's love and admiration of the Giant Cuttlefish, nature's very own implementation of Virtual Reality. Whereas human beings have to use hands to craft images, striking an imbalance between our ability to see and our ability to visually create, this is not so for the charming Cuttlefish. These aquatic creatures communicate by displaying luminous, quickly changing, colorful images all over their bodies. Chromatophores are the color-changing cells found in the Cuttlefish's skin that act as pixels. "Jaron on the web"