Research

During the pandemic, virtual concerts exploited the ability of music to elicit emotion and energy to create a new form of social interaction that transcended geographical time. I did research of several successful virtual concerts.

Strength

•Beautiful scene and well-developed game construction

•Stable user base - gamers and fans - can attract a wider audience

•All Players can participate in the experience and can see each other

–the proximity of concert seats doesn’t exist anymore

•Less costly to implement than an actual concert

•A new business strategy in the metaverse Immortality

•Extend his album visual style

issues

•Lack of interaction, narrative, and immersion compared with the game

•Still remain the distance between the audience and the performer

•Absence Of a ‘sense of live performance’ compare with a concert

•More of a social experiment, providing the audience with the curiosity of virtual presence rather than musical enjoyment.

•Lack of connection and empathy with the performers

- Design Goal -

Through the stage and experience design, help the audience get better understanding of the performer’s new music album concept.

Concept -

Work with the musician- Ajun Yao. Choose four songs from his new album and make it to around 10 minutes of experience. Landing, Sleeping Dream, Thought, One day, through his music, this experience intends to tell a tale of self-discovery and achieving his dream, allowing the audience to experience the creator's inner world of deconstruction, restructuring, and subversion.

In Ajun's live performance, we found that his new album was largely constrained by the live mix and live music equipment and did not live up to our expectations, and that when the acoustic environment is inadequate, the live performance of the music is severely compromised. However in the virtual reality experience, the aural environment was more consistent. This validated the desire to perform a concert in a virtual reality setting.

Moodboard-

Player Journey

The whole experience was made of four edited songs.Before entering the environment, the audience joins a preparatory scene to receive their bracelets, analogous to the time spent in line to enter a concert. In this scene, the audience will be able to see other participants and learn the mechanic.

The audience will enter Scene 1 through the lift, where there are no intricate environment and the musician will sing on stage. Flying mechanic was applied in the scene to better convey the music concept of flying. During the transition, the audience will learn how to operate the teleport, which will also be utilised in scene 2, 3 and 4. In Scene 3, the stage appears and the performer will act around it, with the audience positioned in the centre of the stage.Scene 4 is the opposite, the performer is in the centre and the audience is on the sides.

The audience can remain in the programme after the performance, surrounded by a chat room where they can leave comments or converse with others. Even if the programme is implemented, the NFT bracelet can be acquired as a collection.

Stage 1

According to the intro (LANDNG)concept– a bird that keeps flying and never stops, the scene was adapted as “Endless Road ” in stage 1. In the experience, the idea of "flying" was adapted into a road, where the bird keep to soar without ever touching the ground, just as a person continues to walk without stopping. The crisscrossing of the routes also indicates that the protagonist is confronted with a multitude of options, unable to see the path ahead, but with a sense of conviction that propels him forward. Thus, the performer will stand on a path resembling a ribbon that overlaps and intertwines, with flashing lights along the route indicating which direction he will face.

Furthermore, the space in Scene 1 is designed as a location wedged between the city's point clouds to demonstrate the concept of "flying in the sky". Point clouds contribute to the strange ambiance of Scene 1. The enormous sculpture behind the performers is a pair of wings constructed specifically for the occasion.

The silhouette and tailoring of the clothing, the stage 1 costume we set one dress, one coat and one mask. The stiff jacket and soft skirt form a combination of yin and yang, matching soft and hard, combined with long-sleeved gloves to express an alternative
masculinity. We choose the feather as our primary symbol at the stage 1. We hope
offer audience a sense of sculpture when he present to the show, the costume filled with bird god symbolic values.

Fly mechanic

Stage 2

The second track focuses on a nocturnal fantasy. In his imagination, the past no longer haunts him. He succeeds at whatever he sets out to do. The artist's unwavering faith in his own abilities and his ability to realise his goals shines through in this track.

The song is about the musician reinventing himself by letting go of previous regrets and establishing a better world for himself. In the second stage, the inner world of the musician is reconstructed. This desolate environment contains all objects and locations associated with the past.

All the objects, including the microphones, clothing, and notebooks for writing lyrics, are disproportionately sized, resembling an alien ruin. Some objects from the past appear in the scene as point clouds, a blend of fact and fantasy, all floating in the air without gravity, indicating that this is an empty imaginary inner world.

No extra cost

an ending of a prior awakening

a dispersed fantasy of clouds during a migration

Maybe now is the right time to let go of your regrets.

[Lyrics from SleepingDream]

The second song’s clothes key word is: flexiable, chill, dream. We are inspired from the music and some designer brand ready-to-wear and archives. Like Rick Owens, Alexsander McQueen, Dion Lee.

Through the lyrics meaning of Sleeping Dream. The performer will jump at the anti-gravity space, so clothe must looks like light.

So we decide to use some simply sewing and cutting.
But we only cover two arms at Top, and we add Ribbon silk scarf to ehance the soft and flow feeling.

stage 3

The third stage is about keeping exploring himself. The surrounding environment will change with music presents the character is keeping find his own era.

The third song, unlike the previous two, was composed specifically for the concert. In a genuine performance or the release of a music album, the sequencing of the songs is vital, as it directly impacts the emotions of the audience. The musician wrote Thought with this in mind, employing a big musical vision to help the emotions reach a peak. Thought's musical concept derives from the challenges he continually faces on his quest to self-discovery, as he seeks to prove that he is capable and deserving. It resembles the trek undertaken by the protagonist in every adventure film.

And in the virtual setting, I was reminded of the visual language widely employed in motion pictures, in which the characters remain in the middle of the scene despite constant transformation. This editing method is frequently used to depict characters travelling between numerous realities or experiencing multiple memories simultaneously. Such as in the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once.This is also the main design approach of the third scene,with its constant shift between numerous universes, also symbolises the performer's never-ending seek for his own era.

The second song’s clothes key word is: fight and strength.

So from the tailoring of the costume, we added Cloak, just like Superman has his own Cloak; the sharp gloves also for enhancing power; the blindfold is taken from an image like the blind monk, because turning off the vision, we can focus more on hearing and focus on fighting; and the halo circle on the back can not only increase the momentum and energy, but also enhance the sculptural sense of the characters.
Of course, this design has also maintained the alternative masculinity of the model itself, always revealing a genderless temperament under a very hard appearance.

stage 4

The sun will gradually rise in the fourth stage. The whole environment starts to become brighter and brighter. This represents the character will rebirth from this place.

In the last scene, I'm hoping to set a positive tone for the audience. Just like every film and every stage or play has an ending, the song One Day is a wonderful finish, a depiction of a beautiful fantasy world, a utopia of a dream world. It is about becoming one day what you once desired.

So in Scene 4, there is a 'stage' in the concert which has the platform for performing in the centre while the audience surrounds itself . At the same time accompanied by numerous dreamy abstract pieces, with all the materials tending towards transparent, crystal-like textures to create this priceless sensation.

Compared with the last scene, the previous three scenes were in darker locations. However in the fourth scene I wanted to give a visual feeling of the dawn breaking. The whole experience progressively transitions from darkness to brightness. The audience accompanies the performers from late night till daybreak, thus initiating a new chapter.

The second song’s clothes key words are: Romantic, hope, tenacity.

So we choose the rose as the main visual design, the thistles and thorns around the body like the rose’s thron.

The clothe still keep presenting alternative masculinity in design. We can find the soft and hard personalities in rose and thron.

music visualization

Usually music visualisation was made by capturing the low or high pass in the sound, like bass or drum. But when it comes to a song, which fulfils different frequencies, the effect is not distinct. Plus Unity does not support mixing music within it. As a result, I tried to visualise music in the following ways:

camera shake

lyrics

environment rotate

point cloud animation

scene change

haptic feedback

timeline

To better communicate with the musician, Timeline was used to describe which effects would appear at which stage. A virtual concert, unlike a film script, does not follow the exact order of events; rather, it follows a tight chronology of when effects will occur.In order to clarify the production process, the chronology is separated into three major sections: environment, characters, and music.

The environment refers mostly to variation in the main stage and special effects,denoted in orange and slightly light orange,respectively.The music is separated into distinct portions,like pro-chorus,rap, with the lyrics and their English translations placed in the corresponding timelines.

character design

There are many types of virtual concert avatars, including Travis Scott's Fortnite and Wave VR, which both construct a character avatar and attach the motion capture to it for live streaming. There are also numerous additional methods for visualising characters, such as catching them on camera and visualising them in real time utilising particle systems or using 3D scanned models to generate characters. As the entire project was developed in Unity, it was determined that to create a virtual character of the musician.

The character's design was based on the image of the musician, then sculpted in blender, bound to the completed outfit, and finally connected into the motion capture file.

Mocap

Cloth physics

Interview - with the perfomer

The aim of this interview was to test the second scene in order to determine if it matched the interviewee's expectations and how the experience may be enhanced by asking questions regarding the staging, lighting, and interaction design. The interview was seprated two part, from both performer and audience pespectives.

•Perspective of the performer

More dedicated models—like adding more detailed model
Improve the bonding of sounds and environment
Liveness- can see the reaction of audience
Have backup dancer/clone performer
More VFX for the atmosphere

•Perspective of the audience

More stable ray cast for teleport
More cheer up light in the scene.
Allow themselves to control the time.

Iteration- sound design

degree show