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Eric Whitacre conducts a virtual choir of nearly 6,000

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There are thousands of faces in the skyscraper windows in this anime-inspired 3D music video. Each face is a webcam capture of a singer — 5,905 of them to be exact, from 101 countries across the globe. Their voices have been blended together into a virtual choir by composer Eric Whitacre for his latest composition, “Fly to Paradise.“

Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong In 2010, Whitacre merged 185 singers from 12 countries singing via webcam, so that they sounded like they were performing together in one room. At TED2011, he unveiled a new work with a remote choir of 2,000 — and, at TED2013, he conducted a live and virtual choir, singing together in real time. The video above is his latest experiment in musical collaboration, and as Whitacre writes us: “We have taken the style in a bit of a different direction this time, experimenting and stretching our wings.” Fun fact: The singer credits are actually longer than the video itself.