Move over, marching band: laptop orchestras are here. Princeton’s laptop orchestra PLOrk will be the featured guest at dorkbot in New York this week, but it’s not the only “laptop ensemble.” The Electronic Music Foundation’s Arts Electric notes laptop orchestras span the globe from New Jersey to Russia:
Oddly enough, these pictures seem to go against the zeitgeist of readers here on Create Digital Music, many of whom prefer to stow their laptop out of the way and focus on physical controllers. I’m hoping that occasionally these laptopists (?) get some more physical interaction with their machines. But there’s no question laptops open up new possibilities for ensemble playing. Challenge: find a way to build rhythms as intricate as those in Indonesian gamelans, only with new wave sounds. Not easy, huh?
Anyone got some other computer music ensembles? I saw Berklee School of Music’s ensemble (a school that also has a turntable ensemble), so that’s at least one, but I expect readers here know of / play in / direct others.
Prof. Cook (my favorite professor, founder of PLOrk, falling asleep in the top-center of the picture) has for the past year been pushing the notion of writing computer code in realtime as a form of musical performance. That's why the laptops have just keyboards and mice as their control interfaces. For other projects, however, he builds quite a few cool custom hardware-based controllers.
Thanks! I wondered if there might be some reason, especially given the other stuff he's done with controllers! Live coding … yikes, I'm slow enough coding with hours and hours of time. 🙂 But more power to you.
Other ensembles, anyone?
Peter
Berklee also has a "Tekno Rave Ensemble" taught by Dr. Boulanger. This is closer than the turntable ensemble, but you don't have to use a laptop (altough it's pretty common).
That's right. I knew there was another ensemble I'd heard but forgot which. Does either ensemble have a web home?
Queens University Belfast has BLISS, the "Belfast legion for improvised sights and sounds".
They do about everything, even they seem to be mainly a laptop ensamble, on any given performance you can witness "traditional" laptop improv, circuit bending, realtime coding, use of physical/emotive interfaces, etc.
http://www.sarc.qub.ac.uk/~bliss/
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is it just me or does everyone in this picture look hella bored?
Hello there,
Here our contribution to the network and realtime composition kind with one of the first laptop orchestra to have developed such work.
Based in Tokyo since 2002 -will perform at Kennedy Art Center, washington dc, and other cities in February 2008 .
more info, sounds and videos on http://laptoporchestra.net
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Hello… you may also be interested in the Terminal Quartet, formed in 2003, which has featured luminaries such as Australian synthesists Ollie Olsen and Steve Law, Robert Henke (aka Monolake), Ross Bencina (AudioMulch), Korg Australia guru John Grant, digital music guru and industrial electronics composer, Andy Bagley, the infamous Ash Wednesday (Einstürzenden Neubauten)… and there were more iterations in Australia, Korea and now a new version being hosted in Graz with Joseph 'Seppo' Grundler, Ludwig Zeininger, Peter Venus and myself, Andrew Garton.
http://agarton.org/wiki/index.php?title=Terminal_…
Not quite an orchestra, but has often sounded like one!
[…] enough that it’s used for real-time programming – as in, onstage, in laptop ensembles like PLOrk and (its West Coast descendent we just saw here on CDM) […]
[…] enough that it’s used for real-time programming – as in, onstage, in laptop ensembles like PLOrk and (its West Coast descendent we just saw here on CDM) […]
[…] http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/01/01/laptop-orchestras-proliferate-from-princeton-to-moscow/ […]