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    Finding Community, and Freedom, on VRChat

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    On any given weekend, there are dozens of parties happening on VRChat, a platform where users assume fantastical avatars of their own design.On a recent Saturday night, the street outside the nightclub Tube VR looked typical for East London: a boat moored on the canal, trendy retail spaces lining the waterfront, an underpass covered in graffiti. Inside, however, I found myself dancing next to a hedgehog wearing a top hat, an anime nun with an acid green halo and a humanoid fox in hot pants.Tube VR is a venue and one of the most popular party events on VRChat, a video-game-like social platform that takes place in virtual reality, or V.R., where users can assume fantastical avatars of their own design. When I removed my V.R. headset, I was alone in my bedroom. Wearing it again, I was thrown back into the throbbing heart of a party.During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, regular partygoers flocked to virtual clubs hosted on platforms like Zoom, but since physical venues have reopened, the popularity of these digital spaces has waned. Not so with VRChat. When much of the world was locked down, the platform’s daily user numbers steadily increased. That trend has mostly stuck, with numbers continuing to surpass prepandemic levels, according to data cited by the platform.To attend a virtual club in VRChat you only need a standard PC, but getting the most immersive experience requires a V.R. headset, and a moderately powerful computer. The Tube nightclub is just one of hundreds of thousands of discrete VRChat worlds where people gather and socialize in avatar form.via VRChatThe Tube VR nightclub is just one of hundreds of thousands of discrete VRChat worlds where users can assume fantastical avatars of their own design.via VRChatI felt out of place at my first V.R. party. There was a new social etiquette to learn around how to approach and talk to other clubbers, and I felt my default avatar looked basic compared with the imaginative creatures surrounding me. But with my headset translating my voice and movements into the virtual space and avatars dancing and chatting all around me, it felt surprisingly close to being in a real club.This experience provides a glimpse of how socializing might look in our increasingly technologically mediated future. “Just as video conferencing via Zoom has become a central part of ordinary life for so many people, now that it’s convenient and useful, it’s easy to imagine that in ten years’ time, VR could be playing that role” in daily socializing, too, David Chalmers, a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York University who has written a book about V.R., said over email.Naturally, some aspects of VRChat cannot compete with real life, and V.R. events suffer frequently from delays and glitches. But partying in virtual reality also offers distinct advantages: Personal safety and harassment are less of a concern; users have more control over their environment, and can adjust the volume of people’s voices or the music to their liking; and aside from the upfront hardware cost, events are free.This increased accessibility is particularly meaningful for people who live far from clubbing hot spots, and for users with impaired mobility. The VRChat user Turels was a professional musician until he was diagnosed with adult onset Still’s disease, a form of arthritis that meant he could no longer use his hands to play instruments.“When I got the diagnosis, I thought I was done — time to pack up my music equipment and sell it off,” Turels, who asked that his real name not be published for reasons of privacy related to his illness, said in a recent phone interview. But friends he made in the virtual club encouraged him to try out D.J.ing in virtual reality using specially adapted hardware. He now performs music in VRChat regularly.“VRChat has given that part of my life back to me,” he said.via VRChatShelter is a popular VRChat club that evolves according to a conceptual sci-fi narrative.via VRChatOn any given weekend, there are dozens of VRChat parties. There is Mass, a rave inside the head of a giant robot; Shelter, a popular club that evolves according to a conceptual sci-fi narrative; and Ghost Club, a pioneering Japanese venue that users enter via a phone booth. Each “VRchitect” who constructs a club makes the most of their freedom from the constraints of budget and physical space.One of VRChat’s distinguishing features is that almost all of its content is created by its users. There are few opportunities to monetize their in-game creations, and while some venues run Patreon pages to cover costs, a vast majority are created and run by volunteers — some, like Tube, also raise money for charity.VRChat itself is free to use and largely funded by investors, receiving $80 million in its last funding round in 2021. This caution around monetization has fostered a club scene that feels authentically grass-roots. There are, however, plans to introduce a creator economy in the near future.The ravers are just one of VRChat’s major communities. There are also L.G.B.T.Q. groups, worlds dedicated to role-playing, dancing, Buddhist meditation and erotic encounters. A deaf community teaches V.R. sign language in a virtual school‌.The avatars that users choose are often cartoonish, but the relationships they build in VRChat are unquestionably human.via VRChatMay S. Lasch’s avatar, center, at Concrete, an L.G.B.T.Q. club on VRChat. Lasch began to experiment with their gender expression in virtual reality and said it “helped me find my real self.”via VRChat“I met so many new people that I call my best friends nowadays, who I also met up with in real life,” May S. Lasch, who runs the L.G.B.T.Q. club Concrete on VRChat, said in a video interview. “In the end, V.R. is about the people, not the technology. The technology just brings people from far away closer.”One of the utopian promises of the internet was that you could reinvent yourself online and be anyone you wanted. In VRChat, Lasch is an anime girl with blushing cheeks and long white hair. Born in Germany, Lasch was assigned male at birth but realized at a young age they did not relate to that label. Today, they identify as nonbinary and use they and them pronouns.They did not feel supported in this by their conservative family, but began to experiment with their gender expression in virtual reality, which helped them build the confidence to start presenting differently in real life, too. “During rough times, I remade myself in this game,” they said, “and it helped me find my real self.”Perhaps the biggest barrier to VRChat becoming more of a mainstream clubbing space is the limitations of V.R. hardware. The best headsets are still expensive, and many find them bulky and report experiencing headaches or nausea. But with continued heavy investment in virtual reality from Meta and Sony, and with Apple working on a headset, the technology should keep improving and becoming more accessible.Since V.R. technology is relatively new, there has not been much research into the long-term effect of spending large amounts of time in virtual reality. “I’ve spent so much time in VRChat, close to 4,000 hours,” Lasch said, “I have dreams that are in V.R. Sometimes I spend 12 hours in V.R. and then when I come out of it, I still see the little mute microphone symbol in my vision.”Another obstacle is the fear that virtual reality is a substitute for actual reality. But many of its users said VRChat supplemented, rather than supplanted, real life.This is certainly true for Lincoln Donelan, who runs parties called Loner both virtually and in his hometown, Melbourne, Australia. I found him one evening in the virtual club’s dingy bathroom chatting with a giant fox, a couple of skater girls and a guy in a dinner jacket smoking a cigarette.Donelan’s avatar — an anime girl with dark hair, mint green eyes and tattoos spread across bone-white skin — explained his schedule for the coming weekend: D.J.ing in a real-life club on Friday night, running a V.R. party on Saturday afternoon before going out for dinner and another party in Melbourne, then getting up on Sunday to head back into virtual reality.“V.R. will never, ever replace real-life clubbing, ever. I think it’s the perfect complement to it, though,” he said. “Ultimately, V.R. is just another thing you can choose from.” More

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      in Music

      A ‘Virtual Rapper’ Was Fired. Questions About Art and Tech Remain.

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      Young people are increasingly at ease consuming culture via digital avatars or made with artificial intelligence. Should the same moral guidelines and laws apply to those works?The story of FN Meka — a fictitious character billed as the first musical artist partly powered by artificial intelligence to be signed by a major record label — might seem like a bizarre one-off. In August, Capitol Records dropped FN Meka, whose look, outlaw persona and suggestive lyrics were inspired by real-life music stars like Travis Scott, 6ix9ine and Lil Pump, amid criticism that the project trafficked in stereotypes.But to seasoned observers of technology in pop music and the debate over cultural appropriation, the rise and fall of this so-called robot rapper, whose songs were actually written and voiced by humans, has raised important questions that are not going away anytime soon.Last month alone, an A.I. artwork won a prize in Colorado and a computer program improvised a classical music solo in real time in New York City. From DALL-E 2, the technology that creates visual art on command, to Hatsune Miku, a Japanese software that does something similar for music, the arts world may be on the precipice of a sea change in how its products are created.And young people feel increasingly at ease consuming culture via digital avatars like FN Meka. It has already been happening in hip-hop: A hologram of the rapper Tupac Shakur, who died in 1996, performed at a music festival in 2012; Travis Scott gave a concert through his avatar in the video game Fortnite in 2020; and Snoop Dogg and Eminem rapped as their digital selves and their Bored Ape avatars in a metaverse performance at the MTV Video Music Awards last month.In this brave new world, do fake characters based on real people amount to unseemly borrowing, even theft, or just the kind of homage that has always defined pop music? Even when artificial intelligence does help write music, should the humans behind it be accountable for the machine-created lyrics? And as far as race is concerned, how do the rules of cultural appropriation work when the person doing the appropriating is not a human being with a unique cultural background but a fictitious identity backed by an anonymous, multiracial collective?“A lot of our moral intuitions and codes as humans may have evolved for a context where we have discrete human actors,” said Ziv Epstein, a Ph.D. student at the M.I.T. Media Lab who studies the intersection of humans and technology. “These emerging technologies require new legal frameworks and research to understand how we reason about them.”From left: The Tupac Shakur hologram, Travis Scott in Fortnite and Snoop Dogg at the Video Music Awards.From left: Christopher Polk/Getty Images; via YouTube; MTVFor FN Meka’s critics, the presence of more Black people or people of color in the rooms where the character was conceived, designed and promoted may have helped prevent the negative stereotypes that they say it furthered. Industry Blackout, a nonprofit advocacy group, said FN Meka “insulted” Black culture and leeched off the sounds, looks and life experiences of real Black artists. Capitol seemed to agree when it apologized for its “insensitivity” in a statement.To the critics, FN Meka’s (exaggerated) debt to A.I. and its exclusively digital existence had the effect of absolving the people who were really calling the shots. “There are humans behind technology,” said Sinead Bovell, a futurist and the founder of WAYE, an organization that educates young people about technology. “When we disconnect the two, that’s where we could potentially risk harm for different marginalized groups.“What concerns me about the world of avatars,” she added, “is we have a situation where people can create and profit off the ethnic group an avatar represents without being a part of that ethnic group.”In pop music generally and especially in hip-hop, the culture most likely to be exploited is Black culture, said Imani Mosley, a professor of musicology at the University of Florida.“There’s so much overlap between digital culture and Gen Z culture and Black culture, to the point where a lot of people don’t necessarily recognize that a lot of things Gen Z says are pulled from African American vernacular,” she said. “To interact with that culture, to be a part of that discourse, is to use certain digital and cultural markers, and if you don’t have access to that discourse because you’re not Black, one way to do that is to hide one’s own ethnicity behind the curtain of the internet.”For some, though, vilifying FN Meka’s creators raised the specter of artistic censorship.James O. Young, a professor of philosophy at the University of Victoria who studies cultural appropriation in art, acknowledged there is a long tradition in music of placing a premium on the artist’s lived experience. Young quoted the famous line attributed to the jazz legend Charlie Parker: “If you didn’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”But recently the consensus has moved toward sanctioning only art that arises out of lived experience, to the detriment of both art and political solidarity, Young argued. He pointed to an episode five years ago in which a white artist was pilloried for painting the Black civil rights martyr Emmett Till’s corpse.“One of the claims is, ‘This is digital blackface,’” Young said of FN Meka. “Maybe it is.” But he advocated for balanced examination, rather than swift reaction. “You’ve got to be very careful: I don’t think you want to claim that all representations of Black people are somehow morally offensive.”The broader impoverishment highlighted by both sides of this debate is a lack of language and concepts for discussing art that is not, or not entirely, made by people.Epstein, of the M.I.T. Media Lab, cited the thinking of Aaron Hertzmann, a scientist at Adobe Research. In a paper called “Can Computers Make Art?,” Hertzmann argued that at the moment art can be made only by humans, who are the only ones capable of interacting socially with other humans. In this understanding, machine learning is a tool; the artist behind a drawing made by DALL-E or the similar program Midjourney is not the software, but the person who gave it instructions.However, Hertzmann allowed, “Someday, better A.I. could come to be viewed as true social agents.”Meanwhile, as culture is increasingly mediated through the digital realm, questions of how to account for all of the other people who directly or indirectly touched that art will multiply, undermining the conventional notion of the artist as expressing her indivisible perspective.Some art is now the result of “a complex and diffuse system of many human actors and computational processes interacting,” Epstein said. “If you generate a DALL-E 2 image, is that your artwork?” he added. “Can you be the social agent of that? Or are they scaffolded by other humans?”A final question is deceptively profound: Does it even matter who, or what, composes the song, paints the painting, writes the book? Metaverse avatars and A.I. programs are intrinsically derivative: They are all but guaranteed to be riffs on already existing artists and their works.Anthony Martini, a co-founder of Factory New, the virtual music company that created FN Meka, stands firmly on one side of that debate: “If you’re mad about the lyrical content because it supposedly was A.I.,” he said, “why not be mad about the lyrical content in general?” More

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      in Theater

      Augmented Reality Theater Takes a Bow. In Your Kitchen.

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      The Immersive Storytelling Studio at the National Theater in London is using technology to bring a miniature musical to viewers’ homes. It’s one of several high-tech British projects pushing dramatic boundaries.LONDON — Standing in front of a golden bandstand, dressed in a white satin gown and pearls, the vocalist Nubiya Brandon sashayed to a gentle beat. Stepping toward the spotlight, she took a lazy turn around the stage, singing a playful calypso number and smiling occasionally at the band behind.The weird thing about this show, called “All Kinds of Limbo,” was that Brandon appeared to be in this reporter’s kitchen. The singer was in fact an eerily realistic holographic avatar on a mobile phone screen; her performance had been recorded and was now being broadcast in augmented reality from the National Theater in London.Via the technology’s strange alchemy, which overlays digital imagery onto whatever a camera phone is pointing at, Brandon seemed to be singing and sashaying on the countertop. After she took a bow, her image evaporated and the bandstand faded into nothingness, leaving only a sink full of washing up behind.The success of digital-only theater productions has been one of the pandemic’s surprise silver linings: Audiences have been willing to try them and theater companies have found fans thousands of miles away. But could immersive technologies provide a more intriguing path forward for drama, one that will endure once Covid-19 (hopefully) subsides? Augmented reality (A.R.) and virtual reality (V.R.) are already changing gaming, music and art; might theater be next?“All Kinds of Limbo’s” director, Toby Coffey, said he hopes so. In 2016, he set up the National Theater’s Immersive Storytelling Studio, which operates as a kind of “start-up” within the company, he said in a recent interview at the studio’s modest space, which was crowded with a jumble of technical equipment. The team’s brief is to see how live theater and new technologies can interact and intersect.Toby Coffey, who founded the National Theater’s Immersive Storytelling Studio in 2016.Suzie Howell for The New York Times“Theater makers are naturally fascinated: They’re used to working in 3-D,” Coffey said. “As soon as you bring a director or stage designer or choreographer into V.R., you see their brains whirring.”The studio’s first production, “Fabulous Wonder.land,” was a V.R. music video featuring a track by the musician Damon Albarn with words by the playwright Moira Buffini. The team has since made 360-degree films of live shows, developed a one-on-one piece in which an audience member interacts with a live actor while wearing a V.R. headset and created a mixed-reality “exhibition” about government welfare cuts.“All Kinds of Limbo” came into being in 2019 after the National Theater had a hit with “Small Island,” a play about postwar Jamaican immigration to Britain. Coffey and his team commissioned Brandon, the vocalist, and the composer Raffy Bushman to create a 10-minute song sequence responding freely to the play’s themes. It was written, performed and motion-captured that year, and was initially presented as a V.R. experience in one of the theater’s event spaces.Brandon performing in a motion capture studio to record “All Kinds of Limbo.”The National TheaterWhen the pandemic shut down British performing venues in March 2020, Coffey accelerated plans to turn “All Kinds of Limbo” into an at-home experience. The retooled version can be watched via A.R. on a mobile device, via a V.R. headset, or on a regular computer. Brandon’s performance stays the same, but, depending on the device used, the experience feels subtly different.To summon some of theater’s shared intimacy, it’s being ticketed and broadcast as live, although the show is recorded. Other people attending virtually are represented by blades of moving white light and, by playing with the settings, you can move around the space and see the action from different angles.It’s a short piece, but “All Kinds of Limbo” does feel like the glimmering of a new art form: somewhere between music video, video game and live cabaret show.Over the last few years, Britain’s theater scene has become a test bed for similar experiments. Last spring, the Royal Shakespeare Company co-produced an immersive digital piece called “Dream” that featured actors performing using motion-capture technology and was watchable via smartphone or computer. Other projects, such as shows by the Almeida theater in London and the company Dreamthinkspeak in Brighton, England, require participants to turn up in person and get equipped with VR headsets.Francesca Panetta, a V.R. producer and artist who was recently appointed as the alternate realities curator at the Sheffield DocFest film festival, said in a video interview that practitioners from audio, gaming, theater, TV and other art forms were collaborating as never before. “Many different people are trying to explore this space and work out what it really is,” she said. “No one is quite sure.”One of the most keenly awaited partnerships is between the immersive theater troupe Punchdrunk, which pioneered live site-specific shows such as “Sleep No More” and “The Masque of the Red Death” in the mid-2000s, and the tech firm Niantic, best-known for the wildly successful A.R. game Pokémon Go.Speaking by phone, Punchdrunk’s co-founder Felix Barrett seemed invigorated by the creative possibilities. “We’re on the cusp of a new form of entertainment,” he said. “It’s a new genre; it just hasn’t been named yet.”Later this year, Niantic and Punchdrunk plan to unveil the first results of their collaboration. Barrett was reluctant to reveal too much, but said that it would offer participants “a citywide adventure” that will feel like an immersive video game happening in the real world. “Our goal is to try and make you the hero of your own living movie,” he said.Ambitious as such projects are, they are also — at least by theater standards — time-consuming and forbiddingly expensive. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s “Dream” wouldn’t have been possible without corporate sponsorship and a hefty grant from a roughly $55-million British government fund promoting digital arts innovation. The latest iteration of “All Kinds of Limbo” relies on a partnership with Microsoft and the livestreaming platform Dice.Production work on “All Kinds of Limbo.” The show can be watched via A.R. on a mobile device, via a V.R. headset, or on a regular computer, through Jan. 30.The National TheaterThere’s also the question of audience. Though theater-led projects such as “Dream” and “All Kinds of Limbo” have gained positive reviews, they have attracted only a tiny fraction of the 12 million viewers who watched a 2020 virtual performance by the rapper Travis Scott in the online game Fortnite. The chances of monetization at scale look slim, at least for now.And the irony is that, while the pandemic may have whetted audience appetites for digital drama, it has had devastating consequences for theater companies themselves. The National Theater’s Immersive Storytelling Studio originally had four staff members; after belt-tightening layoffs in the company, it’s now just Coffey and one full-time co-worker. “Even before the pandemic, we could have been doing 10 times more than we had resource to be able to do,” Coffey said. “We need to work within those restrictions.”What happens next is up for debate. The National Theater is working on redeploying the app and distribution platform used for “All Kinds of Limbo” into something that works for other projects. Panetta said that the metaverse, if it genuinely takes off, offers its own possibilities for live performance. “It’s difficult to see what the pathway is; I suspect it’ll be a mix of many different things,” she added.So how long until we’re watching Ibsen or Shakespeare in augmented reality at our kitchen tables? Coffey laughed, then cautioned that designing successful A.R. performances was still an emerging skill. “But some day it’ll happen, I have no doubt,” he said.All Kinds of LimboStreaming through Jan. 30; allkindsoflimbo.com. More

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      in Music

      Abba revient après 40 ans de silence

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      The New York Times traduit une sélection de ses meilleurs articles pour un lectorat francophone. Retrouvez-les ici.STOCKHOLM – La paisible petite île de Skeppsholmen abrite une bonne partie des trésors culturels de la capitale suédoise: Moderna Museet, la troupe de théâtre Teater Galeasen et l’entrepôt de briques rouges réaménagé, à deux pas du bord de mer, où Benny Andersson a son studio personnel. Au début du mois, il a glissé dans sa bouche un paquet de snus (de la poudre de tabac consommée en Suède) tandis que Bjorn Ulvaeus sirotait un café dans l’une des salles ensoleillées; les deux musiciens entourés d’un piano à queue, d’une petite sélection de synthés et, sur le mur derrière un écran d’ordinateur, un assortiment de photographies encadrées.Pour la première fois depuis l’administration Reagan, les deux acolytes discutaient d’un nouvel album pour leur groupe, Abba — un album que l’un des plus grands groupes pop internationaux de l’histoire a réussi à réaliser en secret avec ses quatre membres historiques au complet, près de 40 ans après leur dernière représentation ensemble en public.“On a fait une pause au printemps 1982 et on a décidé que là, il était temps d’y mettre fin” a fait savoir le groupe dans un communiqué en septembre. La réponse fut tonitruante. “Abba, encore un autre vaisseau, n’est-ce pas?”. Ulvaeus jubile dans le studio, situé à quelques pas de celui, plus grand, où ils ont achevé leur album clandestin. “On a fait ce truc et on se retrouve à la une de tous les journaux du monde.”Parmi toutes les grandes figures de la pop musique que le pays a vu naître (Avicii, le créateur de tubes Max Martin, Robyn, Roxette), Abba reste la plus importante et a même son propre musée dédié. Entre 1973 et 1981, le quatuor — avec les chanteuses Agnetha Faltskog et Anni-Frid Lyngstad —a sorti huit albums studio remplis de mélodies, d’harmonies et de cordes méticuleusement agencées, qui ont généré 20 succès dans le classement des 100 plus gros titres de la semaine du magazine Billboard, vendu des dizaines de millions d’albums dans le monde et rassemblé une horde de fans passionnés.Mais son impact révolutionnaire ne se mesure pas seulement en chiffres : Le groupe était réputé pour les risques qu’il prenait avec la technologie et la diffusion de ses titres. Dès le milieu des années 1970, il a été l’un des premiers groupes à produire des mini-films promotionnels très élaborés — aujourd’hui on les appellerait des clips — dont la plupart réalisés par Lasse Hallstrom. Son album “The Visitors”, sorti en 1981, est généralement considéré comme la première sortie commerciale sur CD. En 1999, la comédie musicale “Mamma Mia !” a associé les tubes du groupe à une histoire sans aucun rapport avec les paroles. D’innombrables imitations et deux adaptations au cinéma ont suivi, dont une à laquelle on doit la mémorable performance vocale de Meryl Streep dans “Dancing Queen”.Aujourd’hui, Abba se risque à remettre en jeu peut-être son atout le plus précieux : son héritage. Pas seulement en ajoutant de nouvelles compositions à son répertoire, mais aussi en produisant un spectacle sans qu’aucun de ses membres ne soit sur scène en chair et en os. À partir de mai prochain, dans une salle londonienne construite sur mesure, le groupe se produira sous la forme d’avatars (ou, dans ce cas, d’Abbatars) ultra-sophistiqués, conçus pour reproduire leur look de 1979 — l’époque des dégradés bouffants et des costumes de scène flamboyants.Andersson et Ulvaeus dans le studio d’Andersson à Stockholm. Il s’y rend tous les jours pour travailler.Felix Odell pour The New York TimesAndersson, 74 ans, et Ulvaeus, 76 ans, deux des hommes les plus discrets dans une industrie très stressante, disent avoir été sincèrement surpris, et peut-être un peu soulagés, par l’excitation qui a accueilli l’annonce du nouvel album. (L’album de 10 titres appelé “Voyage” comme le spectacle à venir, sort le 5 novembre chez Capitol, le label du groupe).“On était loin d’imaginer que ce serait si bien accueilli” s’étonne Ulvaeus. “Quand on tente sa chance, on risque une raclée”. Difficile à dire s’il faisait intentionnellement référence à l’un des plus gros tubes d’Abba (“Take a Chance on Me” ou “Tente ta chance avec moi”): ces types ont un petit côté pince-sans-rire.Pourtant, ils auraient pu se douter que leurs retrouvailles susciteraient un grand intérêt. Depuis sa mise en veille en 1982, Abba n’a cessé de prospérer. Au fil des décennies et des mutations de la pop, le groupe a dépassé l’étiquette “Europop ringarde” qui leur collait à la peau dans les années 70 —“Nous avons vu l’ennemi dans les yeux, et c’est eux”, assurait le critique américain Robert Christgau en 1979. Abba est aujourd’hui largement respecté pour son savoir-faire pop sophistiqué, et sa popularité tenace transcende les générations et les frontières.“Abba est tout simplement l’un des plus grands groupes de l’histoire de la musique populaire”, estime Michelle Jubelirer, PDG de Capitol Music Group, dans un mail. “Ils sont véritablement un phénomène mondial, et ce depuis qu’ils ont remporté le concours Eurovision de la chanson en 1974 avec ‘Waterloo’.”Et tous les dix ans , quelque chose vient raviver cet engouement, à commencer par la compilation “Abba Gold” de 1992, qui figure toujours dans les charts britanniques plus de 1 000 semaines après sa sortie (j’avais rédigé les notes d’accompagnement de sa réédition en 2010). Les classiques du groupe et ses prouesses en studio continuent de séduire un grand éventail d’amateurs de pop, les fans d’Elvis Costello, de Carly Rae Jepsen, de Jarvis Cocker, de Kylie Minogue et de Dave Grohl. Demandez à Madonna, qui a même fait appel au groupe pour un extrait de “Gimme ! Gimme ! Gimme ! (A Man After Midnight)” pour son tube de 2005 “Hung Up”.Andersson et Ulvaeus auraient facilement pu s’asseoir sur leurs tas de couronnes suédoises, sachant leur place dans le livre des records bien assurée : “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a à prouver ?” s’exclame Andersson. “Ils joueront toujours ‘Dancing Queen’ l’année prochaine.”Ulvaeus s’esclaffe. Le duo se complète toujours parfaitement. C’est presque comique : Andersson est le musicien d’un musicien qui se rend presque tous les jours dans son studio (au volant d’une Toyota ultra-compacte). Ulvaeus, qui a toujours eu un penchant pour l’entreprenariat, mène divers projets avec sa société de production Pophouse Entertainment (et conduit une Tesla rouge).Parce qu’il n’y avait aucune pression à se retrouver, le duo affirme qu’il n’y avait pas vraiment de plan pour un album : C’est arrivé comme ça, quand quatre potes ont réalisé qu’ils aimaient toujours faire de la musique ensemble.Abba en 1979; les avatars numériques des membres du groupe seront calqués sur leurs looks de cette année-là.Sobli/RDB and ullstein bild, via Getty ImagesTout a commencé il y a environ cinq ans, lorsque Simon Fuller, le producteur à l’origine de la franchise “Idol” et des Spice Girls, a proposé de mettre en scène un spectacle de reproductions en 3D des membres du groupe qui “chanteraient” les morceaux originaux, accompagnés d’un groupe de musiciens sur scène.“C’était un choix facile (pour moi) de les pousser à être le premier groupe important à vraiment embrasser les possibilités du monde virtuel”, explique Fuller dans un mail. “La musique d’Abba séduit toutes les générations comme aucun autre groupe ne le fait depuis les Beatles.”Le projet offrait également l’avantage pratique de ne pas avoir à se soumettre à la contrainte de grands concerts.“Ce qui nous a intéressés, c’est l’idée qu’on pouvait les envoyer sur scène pendant qu’on était à la maison en train de faire la cuisine ou de promener le chien”, explique Andersson.Le duo est parti à Las Vegas découvrir l’hologramme du spectacle “Michael Jackson ONE”, et en a vite conclu qu’il lui faudrait faire environ un million de fois mieux. La société d’effets visuels Industrial Light & Magic, célèbre pour “Star Wars”, leur a garanti que c’était possible. (Fuller n’est plus impliqué dans le projet).Naturellement, “les filles”, comme sont affectueusement désignées Faltskog, 71 ans, et Lyngstad, 75 ans, dans les cercles proches du groupe, devaient être de la partie, d’autant que le processus impliquait des semaines de captation de mouvements. Elles ont dit “OK, si ça s’arrête là”, se souvient Andersson. “On ne veut pas partir en tournée. On ne veut pas d’interviews télévisées ni rencontrer de journalistes.” (Fidèles à leur parole, elles n’ont pas participé à ce reportage).Andersson et Ulvaeus décidèrent que les Abbatars devaient avoir de nouvelles chansons, comme cela aurait été le cas avant les tournées de l’époque. En 2017, Faltskog, qui vit hors de Stockholm, et Lyngstad, installée en Suisse, se sont retrouvées au studio RMV, à une centaine de mètres de chez Andersson à Skeppsholmen. Là, elles ont enregistré leurs voix sur la ballade “I Still Have Faith in You” et le titre disco riche en instruments à cordes “Don’t Shut Me Down”. Les deux chanteuses, qui avaient disparu du monde de la musique depuis des années, ont repris comme si de rien n’était.“Elles sont entrées et elles ont dit quelque chose du genre ‘On y va les gars, on peut encore y arriver’,” se rappelle Andersson. “Incroyable.”Faltskog et Lyngstad n’étaient pas les seules conviées. “Benny m’a appelé en me disant un truc comme ‘Tu peux venir au studio, on pense faire une ou deux chansons avec le vieux groupe ?’”, raconte dans un mail le guitariste Lasse Wellander, qui travaille avec le groupe depuis son album éponyme de 1975. “Au début, je n’ai pas compris ce qu’il voulait dire, puis j’ai réalisé qu’il parlait en fait d’Abba!”.Au départ, l’idée était de ne faire que ces deux morceaux, mais ils ne sont pas arrêtés là. “On s’est dit, ‘Pourquoi ne pas en écrire quelques autres, des chansons, juste pour se faire plaisir?,” raconte Andersson. Et les filles ont dit : “Oui, ce sera amusant”. Alors elles sont revenues et on a eu cinq chansons. Et on s’est dit : “On ne devrait pas en faire quelques unes de plus? On pourrait sortir un album.”Il y a eu pas mal de discussions autour de la place qu’aurait un nouvel album dans une discographie déjà si appréciée. “Une partie de la question était, est-ce que cela va nuire à l’histoire d’Abba, à la musique d’Abba”, raconte Gorel Hanser, qui travaille avec les membres du groupe depuis 1969, avant même qu’ils ne s’appellent Abba, et qui fait partie intégrante de son équipe de direction. Elle trouve qu’Andersson avait eu les mêmes préoccupations quand l’idée de “Mamma Mia !” avait fait jour : “Est-ce que c’est la bonne façon de faire ? Est-ce qu’on risque de détruire ce qu’on a ?”, continue-t-elle. “Mais je pense qu’on s’y est très bien pris. On ne néglige rien qui ne puisse être amélioré.”La préparation du spectacle en scène nécessite des heures d’enregistrement dans des costumes capteurs de mouvement.via ABBADans les nouveaux titres, on trouve certains des textes les plus poétiquement doux-amers d’Ulvaeus, sur la difficulté des relations et des séparations. “Je suis moi-même passé par là”, dit-il. “C’est de la fiction mais on sait exactement de quoi on parle.”Pour Andersson, composer à nouveau pour Abba a été un changement bienvenu. “Je trouve que c’est un peu ennuyeux de ne travailler que sur le recyclage”, estime-t-il, ce qui déclenche un vif échange avec Ulvaeus — leur seul désaccord de la journée — sur son choix de mots.“Tu appelles ça du recyclage, j’appelle ça de la narration transcendante”, rétorque Ulvaeus. “Tu peux envoyer, tu peux faire des trucs sur d’autres plateformes, et ”Voyage” c’est ça : ça raconte une histoire sur une autre plateforme. ‘Mamma Mia!’ c’est ça aussi”, ajoute-t-il à propos de la comédie musicale. “Ce n’est pas du recyclage.”D’une certaine manière, l’échange est du pur Abba : décontracté, mais sous-tendu de préoccupations sérieuses. Un peu plus tard, les deux hommes se reprennent à débattre, cette fois à propos de leurs Abbatars. Andersson fait remarquer qu’Ulvaeus a demandé une modification de la chevelure de son alter ego numérique parce qu’il y a une limite à ce que l’on peut accepter de la réalité de 1979. Je lui fait observer que c’est une excellente façon de réécrire un peu l’histoire en restant fidèle à son esprit. Ulvaeus répond, avec un léger sourire, “Oui, c’est une question existentielle très intéressante”. (Ulvaeus, connu en Suède pour son engagement en faveur de l’athéisme et de l’humanisme, apprécie ce genre de questions; plus tard, il me demande : “Dites-moi, est-ce que vous pensez que la constitution américaine est assez solide pour résister à un nouveau président républicain ?”)L’écriture à deux par Andersson et Ulvaeus a résisté aux divorces et aux critiques méprisantes (Un petit rappel : Andersson a été marié à Lyngstad, Ulvaeus à Faltskog). Ils composent ensemble non-stop depuis leur rencontre en 1966, et leur collaboration a continué après Abba, non seulement pour le groupe d’Andersson, mais aussi pour les comédies musicales “Chess” et “Kristina from Duvemåla” — une épopée sur les immigrants suédois du 19ème siècle en Amérique, qui comporte un moment inoubliable sur les poux.S’ils se partageaient le travail de manière assez fluide dans les années 1970, la répartition des tâches est aujourd’hui beaucoup plus précise : Andersson trouve des mélodies et enregistre des démos dans son repère de Skeppsholmen; il les envoie ensuite à Ulvaeus, qui écrit les paroles. Quand on lui demande où en sont ces démos, Andersson propose de jouer “Don’t Shut Me Down” et se tourne vers son ordinateur. Il ne la trouve pas parmi ses dizaines de fichiers, et cherche avec les mots “Tina Charles” — car la chanson d’Abba a une élégance ondoyante qui rappelle les tubes de la chanteuse britannique.Il finit par dénicher non pas la démo, mais la partie instrumentale finie, et la fait entendre sur l’impeccable sound system. La preuve est faite de l’importance cruciale des voix de Faltskog et Lyngstad dans la tapisserie sonore d’Abba.“Tous les groupes connus depuis les années 70 comptaient plus qu’un seul chanteur”, rappelle Andersson, citant Eagles, Fleetwood Mac et Abba. “Vous entendez Frida chanter un morceau, et après vous entendez Agnetha chanter — c’est comme si c’était deux groupes. Le fait qu’il y ait deux chanteuses, ça aide incroyablement la dynamique. Et alors quand elles chantent ensemble…”Dans les harmonies de “Voyage”, on reconnaît indéniablement la patte d’Abba, même si le registre est un peu plus grave que par le passé. L’âge ne suffit pas à expliquer cette différence : “Pour la plupart des morceaux, on les forçait un peu à monter aussi haut que possible, parce que ça donne de l’énergie,” raconte Andersson.“On les incitait, plutôt que forçait”, corrige Ulvaeus.La pop a beaucoup changé en 40 ans, mais “Voyage” ne cherche pas à ressembler à autre chose qu’à du Abba. “Vous écoutez les nouveaux albums, c’est toujours tellement lisse”, regrette Andersson. “Il n’y a rien qui bouge à part le rythme exact. Moi je ne fais pas ça — je le fais à main levée.”Cette approche contribue à donner au nouvel album un côté intemporel. “De nos jours, on peut tout éditer, mais eux ne l’ont pas fait”, nous dit le batteur Per Lindvall, joint par téléphone, qui collabore avec Andersson et Ulvaeus depuis le tube de 1980 “Super Trouper”, et a participé au nouvel album. “Et en plus, ils n’en on pas fait des tonnes sur les voix. C’est ce qui fait ce son unique d’Abba.”Abba en studio, travaillant sur “Voyage”.Ludvig AnderssonPour le nouveau spectacle, en revanche — dans lequel les deux hommes ont investi “une blinde”, selon Andersson, dont le fils Ludvig en est l’un des producteurs — il leur a fallu recourir à davantage de technologie du 21ème siècle, notamment cinq semaines de capture de mouvements. Il leur a fallu se serrer dans des combinaisons moulantes couvertes de capteurs, et Andersson et Ulvaeus ont dû raser leurs barbes chéries.Alors que les différentes pièces de “Voyage” prenaient forme ces deux dernières années, l’ancien leader des Klaxons James Righton a été engagé pour recruter les musiciens pour le live des Abbatars. Parmi ses 10 membres, on compte Victoria Hesketh, 37 ans, dont le nom de scène est Little Boots. Début 2020, elle a répété avec le nouvel ensemble à Stockholm sous la tutelle d’Andersson.Il y a 40 ans, un parcours aussi long et improbable aurait été inimaginable pour quatre Suédois. “Vous devez comprendre à quel point il paraissait impossible avant Abba de percer en Angleterre ou aux États-Unis”, dit Ulvaeus de la scène pop avant la mondialisation rendue possible par internet. “Ce n’était absolument pas plausible”.Pourtant, non seulement Abba a ouvert la voie pour des musiciens du monde entier, mais il l’a fait avec un pragmatisme d’artisans — ce que ses membres restent au fond d’eux-mêmes. “Le fait est que, même à l’époque, ça a toujours été un boulot de tous les jours”, dit Andersson. “On écrivait les chansons, on espérait que quelque chose de bon en sortirait, on se retrouvait au studio, on les enregistrait. Et on se remettait à écrire. C’était exactement pareil qu’aujourd’hui : c’est juste une question d’essayer de trouver quelque chose qui marche, et de voir ce qui se passe.” More

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      in Theater

      ‘Liminality’ Is Theater of the Mind That Explores the In-Between

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      A new virtual reality experience in Williamsburg marries wondrous production values with banal narratives.The word “liminality,” which broadly refers to intermediate or transitional spaces, evokes visions of New Age-y women with flowing scarves, armchair psychologists or insidious miracle drugs in Burgess-esque dystopias. There’s a bit of all three in “Liminality” at the Museum of Future Experiences (MoFE), a venue and production studio in Williamsburg for virtual reality and immersive audio storytelling. Meditation meets philosophy meets sound bath meets gaming meets Lululemon yogic retreat in a sprawling, enveloping experience that’s inviting and eye-catching, but too conceptually broad and self-satisfied for its own good.You enter the space through a nondescript doorway off Grand Street, which leads to a lobby that offers a few micro-exhibitions for audiences waiting to embark into the liminal realm. On one side a “Virtual Boy” VR headset sits on display and on another, a chest of drawers invites audience members to explore its contents at their leisure. Issues of old pulp fiction magazines sit on top, along with magnifying glasses, and drawers reveal Rorschach tests and books on psychology and surreal art.A guide who is reminiscent of a flight attendant greets the audience, preparing them for a sojourn into a place of “uncertainty, chaos and metamorphosis.” The room where “Liminality” takes place, with its walls of thick curtains, Ambisonic speakers set in towering obelisks and lounge chairs — each with a VR headset — set up in four rows around a central aisle, feels less like a theater than the antechamber of an Epcot ride.Though is this even theater? Theater is perhaps the closest term to describe the experience, but even that is poorly suited; “Liminality” evades any one category or definition, though what else could we expect from a show that’s all about the in-between spaces in perceptions and realities?So let’s just say it’s a theater of the mind. The 70-minute production is split into different segments, some of which are immersive soundscapes and audio performances, and others that are more guided meditations. These are interrupted by three short films that the audience watches via the VR headsets.Stately gongs and dreamy swells of sound announce an introspective performance tailored by each audience member’s imagination. A narrator talks you through a guided visualization where you’re meant to find a field, trees and your own childhood self before floating off into ethereal realms. Warning: Your mileage may vary. Whether the exercise grants you enlightenment or a short nap depends on your own mental performance (my experience skewed closer to a siesta). Either way, the segment, which bookends “Liminality,” is the most pedantic and least interesting part of the show.That’s more the fault of the script than the technical elements of “Liminality,” which don’t disappoint. The sounds are succulent and otherworldly; even the thunder and rainfall of a storm during an audio segment called “The Doldrums,” about a captain and crew stranded in the ocean, are rendered with such sonic dimension that I was surprised to find myself still perfectly dry and sheltered at the scene’s conclusion. The lighting, from the room’s shifting hues to the soft beams of the Edison bulbs in the overhead lamps to the ultraviolet gleam that gave the lettering of my T-shirt an iridescent nightclub glow, is phantasmagoric.But it’s the VR-based segments that are most transporting. The first VR short film, “Life-Giver,” created by Petter Lindblad and Alexander Rönnberg, follows a family on a journey to catch the last transport ship off a dying, post-apocalyptic Earth. The second, “Mind Palace,” written and directed by Carl Krause and Dominik Stockhausen, is a sensual, impressionistic examination of the end of a relationship. The final VR film is “Conscious Existence,” created by Marc Zimmerman in collaboration with MoFE. It’s a sumptuously illustrated existential journey through earthly landscapes and the far reaches of space.The vibrancy of the visuals, combined with the tactile vibrations of the VR device — rendering crashes and quakes — make for an experience that combines the immediacy of theater, the visual dialect of film and the technological rush of gaming. It all adds up to a strikingly immersive feat of world-building: You can survey a sky full of constellations overhead or turn around to see the rubble of a broken Earth extend toward a horizon. (Audience members who wear glasses, however, along with those prone to vertigo, may find all this Matrix-esque exploration tiring and discombobulating.)The narratives are hit and miss. “Mind Palace” is gorgeously executed, but the elegant scenes don’t provide enough narrative context. A sentient pool of blood that ebbs and gushes around the two men implies violence, but what kind of violence? Literal? Metaphorical? It isn’t clear.The sublime landscapes of “Conscious Existence,” with the purple and pink nebulae, swaying forests and carnivalesque pops and whorls of light, recall the transcendental filmmaking of Terrence Malick. The voice-over narratives are less impressive; the didacticism of the monologues exacerbate the self-consciously meditative style of the performances.For all of the technical originality of “Liminality,” what ends up staying with you is the banality of the stories and themes. “Life-Giver” gave me flashbacks of every post-apocalyptic sci-fi film from the past few decades. An audio segment called “Death of a Cave Allegory,” a modern retelling of Plato’s famous parable, felt like an unremarkable excerpt from an undergraduate philosophy class.That’s also indicative of the larger problem of “Liminality”: It aims to tackle a concept so vast and multifaceted, it has no clear definition of its subject or focus for its intentions. A liminal space can be twilight or purgatory or the realm of dreams. It can be the middle ground between immigration and citizenship, or a trans or nonbinary way of identifying sexuality. “Liminality” is both too large and too narrow, its smattering of narratives and sonic explorations only revealing all the other routes the show could take.Though that’s the problem with liminality, isn’t it? The innate paradox: It can be everything and nothing all at once.LiminalityAt the Museum of Future Experience, Brooklyn; mofe.co More