Meet NOISE festival-entirely virtuallllll

Ok, here is something innovative! Meet others at music festival, that is virtual!

by 365MAG
NOISEFESTIVAL.COM LAUNCHES IN SECOND LIFE

As an entirely virtual festival, NOISE is the perfect partner for Second Life, the virtual world that allows users to interact in a self-contained on-line universe. On Friday 26th September this perfect pairing comes to fruition, as NOISE launches in Second Life with a display of this year's best entries in the NOISE categories of: Music; Fine Art; Fashion; Design; Architecture; Graphic Design; the Written Word; Photography; Film and Animation.

The press and the public will be able to log into the Oldham Second Life Island, where they can network with NOISE curators and participants, while enjoying a DJ-mix of the best NOISE music entries. The event will be streamed live onto big screens in Liverpool, Hull and Swindon for audiences in the city centres.

In Liverpool in-particular, the event will celebrate the launch of the Cultural Olympiad, a four-year celebration of culture leading up to the London 2012 Olympics, with NOISEfestival.com street teamers available to talk about the project's aims to involve young people in the creative industries.
The NOISE Festival, for those that don't know, is a biennial event that invites the best and the brightest under 25s in the above categories to upload their efforts onto the NOISE website. The best of their work will be chosen by specially-chosen NOISE curators, with the cream of the crop being showcased on the site throughout October (entries stopped being taken on September 1st, sorry!). Special media partnerships will allow the top NOISE talent to work with the BBC, MTV and MSN online; allowing these young hopefuls a level of exposure that many artists of any age would kill for.

So, just who are these 'curators', then? Well, for Music there's Mercury Prize- winning artist Badly Drawn Boy, acclaimed architect Zaha Hadid keeps an eye on the Architecture, eco-chic designer Noki looks over the Fashion entries, Habitat's Tom Dixon asses the Design, and Norman Rosenthal (former head of exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Art) monitors the quality of the Fine Art submissions.

However, that's just phase one of the NOISE experience. In the second year of the event ( 'biennial' means 'every two years'-ed), the NOISE website will allow the artists to network with each other, so that the budding filmmakers can find themselves the perfect soundtrack artist, or vice versa.