The skull was sporting sunglasses and chomping on a cigarette, the smoke from a red-hot ember floating to the top of the television monitor. This glowering oval image formed the “O” in Z-E-V-O-N.
In case there was any confusion as to the Zevon in question, a plate of meat, mashed potatoes and peas revolved behind a logo on the screen; a large-caliber handgun provided the axis.
Warren Zevon–musical mercenary, master of mayhem–was on the cyberspace mojo wire, performing a rockin’ little ditty about a fugitive “junk bond king, playing Seminole bingo” in the Everglades.
The musicians, as seen on the Sony monitor, were overly pixelated and the speakers could barely translate the words in a comprehensible fashion. But there was no mistaking the artist on stage, blond hair tied back in a ponytail and wire-rim glasses bouncing with the pointed pronunciation of each word.
This story-song, another of Zevon’s tightly packaged portraits of desperate men and their personal demons, was co-scripted by the equally eccentric journalist and mystery writer Carl Hiaasen. Soon, a lyric sheet would flash on the screen, compensating for the poor sound system, and their ironic tale of a “suitcase full of money . . . gators and flamingos” was made coherent for the small audience of computer geeks watching this landmark telecast at the SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group in Computer Graphics) convention.
Before heading off into the ether, Zevon would perform one more new song, also written with Hiaasen, warning: “Don’t knock on my door/ if you don’t know my Rottweiler’s name.”
The demonstration was intended to be a preview of one research group’s vision of the interactive future. Zevon and his band were performing on the stage of the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip, a few miles from the floor of the Los Angeles Convention Center, where the gathering of computer-graphics specialists was in full swing.
The telecast, the first live concert transmitted via a technique developed by New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, also was being made available to several thousand cable subscribers in west L.A. and Santa Monica. It allowed viewers to retrieve supplemental information and discuss what they were seeing and hearing by using existing phone lines.
The system, “YORB: The Electronic Neighborhood,” provides an on-screen “virtual environment” that–in this demonstration–offered viewers an opportunity to call up lyrics and concert dates and be entertained by 3-D graphics not seen by those in the nightclub audience. In the future, viewers might also be able to dictate camera angles, vote on what song they might like to hear next and receive information similar to that offered on an album jacket.
Subscribers to computer on-line services and Internet surfers have been promised these kinds of cultural diversions for years. What they’ve gotten, instead, are herky-jerky images of musicians (including the Rolling Stones) and various chat rooms that allow fans to debate every nuance of their favorite act.
It’s interesting but hardly a substitute for being there.
The transmission of live material on-line can’t yet match pre-recorded performances or standard television while simultaneously offering interactivity. Such a combination would provide the pot of gold at the end of the cyber-rainbow. Many of the giant telecommunications companies are actively working with entertainment providers–such as House of Blues New Media–to create cultural products for home consumption.
“YORB is a way of getting interactivity to people who don’t have computers,” says Nick West, interactive TV coordinator for the NYU project. “We want to bring the good ideas of the Web to TV users. We’re dealing with issues the Web might not get to for three or four years.”
What makes West’s concept unique among the on-line dreamers and schemers is the simple fact that YORB actually is available, on a limited scale, via existing technology, for people who have yet to invest in computers.
“Everybody’s waiting for something down the road, but we’re doing it now,” says West, sitting at the bank of equipment that served as a makeshift studio but cost only about $50,000. “Our role at the NYU school of arts is to train designers, using off-the-shelf hardware and software. We’re hacking culture, instead of codes.”
Access to various YORB presentations already is available weekly on New York’s Manhattan Cable system. A limited number of cable subscribers can participate in a show by calling in and punching in requests on their touch-tone telephone, while other viewers can eavesdrop on their activities.
The Zevon concert employed videoconferencing technology provided by Massachusetts-based PictureTel Corp. and Pacific Bell phone connections–significantly, along copper wires, not a pie-in-the-sky fiber-optic network–to deliver the music to SIGGRAPH and subscribers of Century Cable. YORB’s Manhattan Cable shows are backed by NYNEX and Viacom.
The House of Blues performance was being shown at the YORB booth in the convention’s Interactive Community workshop area. It was one of several academic projects producing real-time results in a decidedly futuristic environment.
The convention itself has grown from being a small academic gathering of computer-graphics pioneers two decades ago to today’s bustling marketplace for artists, special-effects wizards and video editors looking to further revolutionize the way Hollywood does business.
Nearly 40,000 people showed up at the convention to network and observe the latest wrinkles on the digital technology front–and to look for work in the new-media departments of studios that included DreamWorks SKG and Industrial Light & Magic. If one thing was made clear in the demonstrations by such companies as Microsoft, Silicon Graphics, Avid, Kodak and Softimage, it was that almost nothing that appears on the big screen in the future will necessary be real.
Images, sound effects, action sequences and dialogue all can and will be enhanced and distorted easily, if not cheaply, to fit a director’s vision.
Digital technology will work to enhance musical enjoyment, as well.
Marc Schiller, vice president of new media for House of Blues, says the nightclub chain plans to play a role as a content provider, using its network of clubs and educational activities. Last spring, the House of Blues linked schoolchildren in three cities for a concert and interactive musical workshop featuring Little Richard.
Already, the House of Blues creates a concert series for cable TV and it has experimented with projects that put audiences in one nightclub in touch with those in another. Its record label has produced a blues anthology collection and a gospel CD by the Blind Boys of Alabama.
The next step would appear to be electronic publishing and interactive home entertainment–whether via cable and telephone lines, on-line systems or the Baby Bells–and providing content that might translate to profits for providers, distributers and artists alike.
But Schiller hopes that the medium won’t distort the message.
“Nothing beats being in the room,” he says. “The ISDN is literally a phone line to the club. It’s meant to supplement, not substitute for, the concert experience.”
Schiller says that about 50 musicians, from John Mayall to AC/DC, were invited to the House of Blues after the most recent Grammy Awards show to discuss possible applications of interactivity, the Internet and CD-ROMs. Zevon was among the artists most interested in digital technology and, so, it was a happy coincidence when his schedule found him at the Los Angeles club concurrently with SIGGRAPH.
“Asking him to get involved was easy; he’s into this whole area,” says Schiller, who adds that the technology shouldn’t change how an artist presents his music. “If Warren’s worried about Nick or me, he’s not going to give a good concert. The artists play, that’s it.
“House of Blues wants to create content and we need to be involved in it today. It’s a long-term commitment.”
The chain currently includes clubs in Boston, New Orleans and Los Angeles. It will open one in New York this fall and plans for a nightclub-restaurant in downtown Chicago should be announced soon.
The YORB project team will continue to work with its corporate partners to refine the transmission of images and sound to replicate TV-broadcast quality.
Schiller and West say that all of the major telecommunication companies are looking to such combinations of content and technology for their proposed multi-channel rollouts. But at the moment, those companies merely are promoting “vaporware–it sounds great but doesn’t exist.”
“We’re doing it right now,” says West. “Getting it to the consumers with a cable converter box, phone lines and off-the-shelf technology.”
