Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) at Macworld
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I was lucky to catch this performance live. They were on stage right before I was this year. The Stanford Laptop Orchestra, or SLOrk, is just amazing to watch.
The Stanford Laptop Orchestra is a large-scale, computer-mediated ensemble that explores cutting-edge technology in combination with conventional musical contexts. This unique ensemble comprises more than 20 laptops, human performers, controllers, and custom multi-channel speaker arrays designed to provide each computer meta-instrument with its own identity and presence. The orchestra fuses a powerful sea of sound with the immediacy of human music-making, capturing the irreplaceable energy of a live ensemble performance as well as its sonic intimacy and grandeur. At the same time, it leverages the computer’s precision, possibilities for new sounds, and potential for fantastical automation to provide a boundary-less sonic canvas on which to experiment with, create, and perform music.
Just watch and listen – and decide for yourself how high this goes on the awesome factor scale.
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5 Comments
Steve Wozniak
January 21st, 2009
at 12:46pm
This is amazing. The first time I saw SLOrK was outdoors in the New Guinnea sculpture garden at Stanford. You could walk around and witness differnt sound qualities from different vantage points. It’s like a new kind of orchestra, with new conducting techniques. It helps that the speakers, hand-built by the orchestra members from IKEA salad bowls, are excellent at directing sound in any direction.
Each performer uses a MacBook and controls sound via the trackpad, keys and also by using the inertia detectors of the MacBooks. On occassion they will hold up their laptops and rotate them for different effects.
Google SLOrK and you’ll find fascinating stories of the orchestra, the language developed for this orchestra, ChucK, and the conductor Ge Wang. He has created an iPhone app as well.
Kyle Petreee
January 21st, 2009
at 2:49pm
This is soooo cool!
“Why did you miss like 20 measures in the middle?”
“My instrument froze, I had to force quit it.”
Sven Vollstag
January 21st, 2009
at 3:36pm
…when they start using creative hardware im all ears…
…^_^…
…
…hey woz!…
Matt
January 23rd, 2009
at 3:13pm
I guess I will have to turn in my Geek credentials because I found this completely monotonous and boring. Oh, well… give me Animusic any day.
It reminds me of a time in high school in New York in the 70’s when they paid for this group of musicians to come in and give a music seminar to our concert choir. They were all high as kites and spent two hours having us all chant, “Ga Ma La Taki Taki” the whole time. Nice gig if you can land it!
Kc
January 24th, 2009
at 9:32am
The first time I saw The Stanford Laptop Orchestra perform I was intrigued by their set-up and numbers. The Director, Ge Wang, has an ear for harmony and is finely tuned where musicality is concerned. A person’s listening experience may be more profound or differ from the next person based on knowledge, interests and education. Just as in opera, 18th century art or NASCAR – most agree to disagree on their entertainment value by the simple assumption that if you can’t see the beauty then you just “don’t get it”.
Personally, I enjoy the various sounds of rain or water and what I heard was a professional tweakage of splashing, dripping, cascading of it. Im sure that making lots of it and mixing together isnt as easy as it comes out sounding in the end– which means Wang is a freaking genius. Do I get Wang? Probably not entirely, but I find his laptop music creation and execution unique and something to marvel at.
Do I get it? Whether I do or don’t is superf Maybe not, but I find the creation and execution unique and something to marvel at. just like I just like I dont know if I do just know by I have rhythm but can’t sing. I can appreciate Camron Paul and his scratching waterdsounded like someone tweaking the sounds of water dripping, noting these factors contribute to one’s entertainment or appreciation.