2,000 voice strong choir

Hi. This is another interesting video and a fascinating concept. What if you had a few people get together to sing a song you wrote? What if you got them to get their friends, or simply strangers, and all of these people who sing well, and they started to sing your song in a strong chorus? What if you found a way to get many more people together to sing that song? What if this grew out of your control and somehow you found a way to control it, to blend it together, to make something, incredible?

Then what if there were a medium that allowed people to gather together, while apart, people who never met before, who could collaborate, and then you could put it all together as a modular collaboration and then once pieced together, you could play it for the world?

That is exactly what Eric Whitacre. He discovered this capability and he went with it, explored it and turned into something, amazing.

"So two things struck me deeply about this," Eric says in the video, "The first is that human beings will go to any lengths necessary to find and connect with each other. It doesn't matter the technology. And the second is that people seem to be experiencing an actual connection. It wasn't a virtual choir. There are people now online that are friends; they've never met. But, I know myself too, I feel this virtual esprit de corps, if you will, with all of them. I feel a closeness to this choir -- almost like a family"

"What I'd like to close with then today," Eric continues, "is the first look at "Sleep" by Virtual Choir 2.0. This will be a premier today. We're not finished with the video yet. You can imagine, with 2,000 synchronized YouTube videos, the render time is just atrocious. But we do have the first three minutes. And it's a tremendous honor for me to be able to show it to you here first. You're the very first people to see this. This is "Sleep," the Virtual Choir."

Check out this amazing story, Eric Whitacre's virtual choir, 2,000 voices strong. Be patient and listen to the whole thing because the story is entertaining and rewarding and in the end, you are indeed rewarded.

It is simply beautiful to behold.
So, go ahead, behold it.