San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
San Antonio rocker plays to virtual reality
Bass guitarist experiments with animation on YouTube
Last year, Arturo Knight hired freelance animators who spent seven months creating a trio of 3D virtual gorillas.
In February, he helped local musicians release an instrumental called “Overture” on Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Music. A month later, he combined the music and animation to produce a 30-second YouTube video of The Mad Apes, the trio he’s dubbed “the world’s first Metarock band,” and promoted plans to launch an exclusive collection of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, of the virtual gorilla group this month.
“People are already enjoying virtual life instead of their real life,” said Knight, 28. “That’s mainly because of COVID, but also because of people with social anxiety. But now you can go into virtual reality and speak with anyone you want without physically being there.”
Knight, a bass guitarist with local heavy metal band Jessikill, is one of the first known musicians in San Antonio to experiment with performing in the 3D world known as the metaverse. He’s garnered support for his efforts from famous rock bands and rappers — and from the Tech
Port Center + Arena at Port San Antonio.
“You can literally become a dinosaur in the metaverse. You can change your voice. You can change your height. You can become literally anyone you want,” Knight said. “And that’s the great thing that people are seeing about it.”
Conceptual to commercial
Metaverse is a term coined by American writer Neal Stephenson in his 1992 book “Snow Crash,” in which he described a societal shift from the physical world to a new, immersive version of the internet accessed via virtual-reality headsets, augmented reality glasses, phone apps or other devices.
Today, the metaverse is transitioning from conceptual to commercial as 3D virtual reality technology enables people to access it through devices such as Meta Quest 2. At about $300 it’s among the least expensive VR headsets available.
It’s a natural in video games, where “World of Warcraft” enables players to buy and sell virtual goods and “Fortnite” offers digital experiences such as concerts.
America’s largest companies are spending billions on the effort.
Tech giants like Apple, Google and Microsoft are creating metaverse infrastructure as they bank on the notion people will create second lives in augmented and virtual reality. Facebook had sold about 10 million Oculus Quest 2 headsets before changing the company name to Meta Platforms Inc. and rebranding the device as Meta Quest 2.
Nike is rushing into the metaverse to sell virtual sneakers in virtual worlds. Likewise,
Walmart plans to sell virtual merchandise.
And famous artists are expressing interest.
In April, Snoop Dogg released a video for his song “House I Built” on The Sandbox metaverse platform, featuring the rapper’s digital avatar singing and dancing.
Along with the increasing activity and considerable hype surrounding the metaverse come just as many skeptics. Is it a fad? Is it marketing? The answers are unclear.
“As of today, there is nothing new about virtual reality or the metaverse than before Facebook became Meta,” said John Quarles, an associate computer science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio who has academic interests in augmented and virtual realities. “Everything they’re doing today was all possible. But is this going to become a game changer?”
His answer? Only if the cost of bringing virtual worlds to life comes down enough to make it broadly accessible.
“If you want the metaverse to work,” Quarles said, “it has to
have the same adoption, in my opinion, as Facebook and Instagram.”
A metaverse band
Sporting a mullet, Def Leppard T-shirt and tight black jeans at Halycon coffee and lounge, Knight appeared energetic despite recently returning from a monthlong national tour with Jessikill. The band — which includes Jyro Alejo on guitar, Jordan Ames on drums and lead singer Jessica Espinoza, known to many for her time as a contestant on “The X Factor” — played in California, Arizona, Ohio, New York and other states.
Eventually, Knight wants to help bring Jessikill into the metaverse, where he hopes the band can tour virtually for a worldwide audience.
For now, he is focused on getting his side project, The Mad Apes, there.
Quarles, the computer science professor, is also a musician and interested in what the virtual band could create on the metaverse.
“I think it could be fun to watch a heavy metal concert,” he said. “I would totally do that.”
Still, he has questions: How will bands make a virtual concert accessible and entertaining for people in a digital environment? People could watch the band play on various devices, but do enough fans own the VR headsets needed to enjoy an interactive experience? And will fans wear such equipment long enough to watch a full concert?
“This is totally feasible,” Quarles said. “As long as they pipe the audio through properly, I think it will be kind of interesting and fun.”
Like Snoop Dogg, Knight is a fan of cryptocurrency, the digital money traded largely without the involvement of governments or central banks. They are avid supporters of blockchains, the distributed ledger systems maintained by computers around the world to securely verify data related to using cryptocurrency. And they are investing in NFTs, the images and audio and video files that have been authenticated by blockchain.
Knight aims to eventually sell The Mad Apes’ songs, along with concert tickets and merchandise, through NFTs for cryptocurrency on platforms such as OpenSea.
‘The future of music’
He’s not seeking a deal with a record label. Rather, he believes selling
NFTs can help musicians make money directly from fans who buy songs as digital files stored on a blockchain. In turn, fans could own music as an
NFT, for example, and make money if that digital item increases in value.
“There hasn’t really been a way to invest in a band unless you’re a record label,” Knight said. “So I thought,
‘How could I connect NFTs with the music and give artists the credit and money they deserve without having to search and struggle for a record label, without making the main goal of the band just to be signed?’ These NFTs are giving us opportunities.”
He looks forward to the time an NFT of a song can become more valuable as the song becomes more popular.
“Never before has it been possible for a fan to invest in a band and make money from them,” he said. “It’s like a music stock market, kind of, but without all the B.S.”
Knight acknowledged the recent crash of the cryptocurrency market and the drop in NFT accounts. But like other NFT enthusiasts, he is confident the market will rebound and believes musicians and technologists will lead the way into the metaverse. He is not alone.
“I want to give a real big shoutout to The Mad Apes, the world’s first metarock band,” said Eric Bobo, the drummer for the popular hip hop group Cypress Hill who also performed on
tour with the Beastie Boys, in an Instagram post in late March. “You guys are helping to shape the future of music, because metaverse is where it’s going. The future is here, the future is now, and the metaverse is about to really blow up and blow out of the water.”
Bobo even asked Knight about collaborating on an NFT project.
“You guys are going to be on the forefront, and I want to be down,” he said. “We can make something really funky, really heavy, and really be on the forefront of what is gonna be the future of music.”
Heavy metal at Tech Port
Knight has also caught the attention of Port San Antonio President and CEO Jim Perschbach, a self-described heavy metal fan who recalls seeing Jessikill play at Fitzgerald’s Bar & Live Music venue in San Antonio in 2017.
More recently, ASM Global, the general manager of the Tech Port Center + Arena, hired Knight as a graphic designer to create flyers for the Smashing Pumpkins concert that opened the arena in May.
Knight and Perschbach met when the concert flyers were finished.
“Jim does not look like a metal head,” Knight said, “but he’s the biggest metal head you’d ever meet.”
Perschbach said Knight surprised him, too.
“In talking with him,” he said. “the conversation turned to things like tech, computers and the metaverse.”
Jessikill now is scheduled to perform in the Tech Port Center + Arena in late September. And while that’s the only current business connection between Knight and the venue, ASM Global has been talking with the musician “about the possibility of using NFTs in terms of promoting some shows, in terms of things you could sell or give out at concerts, nothing different than any other center is doing.”
Perschbach is intrigued by Knight’s vision of pursuing NFT opportunities in the local, physical concert space, as well as his promise to help small, unsigned bands make money through digital tokens.
Both of them, in noting music fans’ propensity to buy T-shirts and other collectibles of their favorite bands, wonder whether there is a reliable and profitable way to sell such items for digital currency.
“It’s the same with NFTs,” Knight said. “But what if NFTs existed when your favorite band was created? Imagine investing in Iron Maiden in the 1980s?”
Perschbach, who remembers how music fans in his youth posted band memorabilia on their walls at home, is fascinated by the idea.
“You always want something that’s going to be a wow factor for some people to hold onto. Conceptually, if a ticket also doubles as a piece of art, if it’s electronic, if it’s digital, that’ll be something cool,” he said. “What I think is fascinating by that is our vision here (at Tech Port) is to find ways to incorporate technology to make existing businesses, existing entrepreneurs, existing industries more successful. That’s an intriguing use of technology, art and entrepreneurship.”
Perschbach is also interested in Knight’s vision of creating and playing music in the metaverse. Whether the concept has a place at Tech Port remains to be seen.
“It kind of reminds me of the early days of the internet,” he said. “The metaverse is simply another evolution of how people use the internet. And if that’s the case, does it open up more opportunities for people to communicate, for businesses to transact, for opportunities to be created?”