Of Musicals, Virtual worlds and upcoming site updates and where to connect
Hah. I’ve been obviously bad at site updates and other general updatey things but here we finally are. The pandemic has proven mildly distracting, but I’ll try and do better…on this updatey front.
Updates
100 CAPES 100 stories – 100 speaker Monster project
Let’s begin at the latest.
The year begins with a bit of fun from House that Dan Built. A wonderful female focused arts organization. I’ve been commissioned along with other fantastically talented composers Jessica O’Donoghue and Pru Montin to make an hour long piece made from 100 interviews of 100 women from various walks of life.
There’s an emerging composer call out here if you want to join in the fun of working with us.
https://www.thehousethatdanbuilt.com/100-capes-100-stories
Dolby Researcher and a stint at UTS
This year I start at UTS doing a Masters of Research making a creative project (its songs) with Dolby. More to be revealed. But excitement abounds because I’ve been experimenting in musical virtual worlds. More on that in a bit. I’ve got a site update to do. (see below)
Musical with NIDA
Last year’s highlights were a musical workshop with NIDA where I got to run a fantabulous workshop together with film veteran David Elfick and remarkably accomplished music composer Peter Dascent, directed by the wonderfully talented Elsie Edgerton-Till. This is a musical I had fun co-writing music and story for. JH is a supernatural musical based on South East Asian legends, which begins with a skeptical boy peeing up the wrong tree…and getting teleported as a result.
Yay toilet humour – and don’t piss up the wrong tree. All classic ingredients for a play for children.
It’s looking like we continue the fun later this year. I’m looking forward to the public performance.
Martial Arts Papers
I continue to find Beat Saber (or similar music games) very fascinating and I love martial arts. I’m also obsessed with how well movement games in VR might serve as a movement repository for martial arts moves .
I’ve invited Grandmaster Zhang Chongwei to choreograph an actual fight sequence to one of my compositions. Chongwei is the principal instructor in TK martial arts and has won a ridiculous amount of martial arts championships. We then put music and martial arts together as a Beat Saber playable mod.
This has been written into a paper with Dr Rhett Loban and Rauno Parrila. It’s here https://gamescriticism.org/articles/ong-et-al-5-a
The paper’s the first of many and we will be making the Beat Saber mod available once the moves are fine-tuned and we have done a few more tests. Keep an eye out for test player callouts.
New Game in Progress
Have picked up programming so while making a Game with the wonderful manga artist Queenie Chan. We think it’s nostalgic horror based in my hometown of Singapore. Here’s a peek at the site of creation.
Site updates
The site’s held very tenuously by duct tape and desperate monkeys and in dire need of updates. So those of you contacting with broken links… it’s going to be fixed, just going to take a bit because I am still working on being legion
Contact
Should be a post by itself but I’m going to try and keep it short here. Socials are a bit of a drain. At some point, I think they just steal time away from music and other creative fun so I’ve obviously kept it minimal.
Also, the internet’s a little angry these days. So I’m holed up making a bunch of things instead, without entering the internet’s angry little pub and joining the shoutey activities.
I’ll probably start up discord…since it’s temporarily less evil than the metas and glazebooks and maybe…just maybe keep twitter, but I’m unsure. I know contact’s been a little less since I’ve moved a little away from just singer-songwriter stuff, but I’d love to keep in contact. And yes, the music and songs are still coming in one way, form or another. And thank you, those who drop a message to say hi. It makes my day 😀
So keep an eye out. and I’ll see u hopefully be on the other side of a site update at this rate…