September 1st, 2009

Torley Wong of Japan, besides being a Second Life resident, blogger, evangelist, and community ambassador, is (among other things) an improvisational pianist. Using Archive.org’s Open Source Audio repository, Torley has made nearly four hundred recordings of his original solo piano improvisations available for free. Below is a ride through Civilization Survives from solo piano 6: RRPM (Really Repetitive Piano Music). The image used for the skysphere in this video is Shadows of Pompeii by Flickr user Stuck in Customs.

Torley has over 15 years of experience participating in and managing online communities, from dial-up BBSes to popular forums to Second Life itself. His “special generalist” achievements at Linden Lab involve a multitude of fields, including: leading adoption and usage of communication tools (like the Official Second Life Blog), establishing improved rapport between support and engineering departments, championing social networking initiatives and user outreach, and driving innovative growth of the community’s content creation. Before being reborn into Second Life, Torley was an accomplished concert pianist, electronic music producer, and multimedia designer. [...]
June 2nd, 2009

I thought I’d kick off June with the appropriately titled “June (I Hate This Month)” from Los Angeles-based artist Monk Turner’s Calendar album, where he’s written and recorded a song for every month of the year. As a self-described “Concept Artist,” Monk Turner makes all of his music freely available under Creative Commons via Archive.org’s Open Source Audio repository.

“With Creative Commons licenses, I have the ability to distribute albums freely to anyone in the world without the need for a distributor and without worrying that someone could be using the songs outside of their intended purpose. I couldn’t do what I do without Creative Commons.” — Monk Turner