SLOrk/ICMC2009

Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk): Research, Performance, Classroom

Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) Stanford University

Abstract

In the paper, we chronicle the instantiation of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk), an ensemble of laptops, humans, hemispherical speaker arrays, interfaces, as well as mobile smart phones. Motivated to deeply explore computer-mediated live performance, SLOrk provides a platform for research, instrument design, sound design, new paradigms for composition and performance. It also offers a unique classroom. Founded in 2008, SLOrk was built from the ground-up by faculty and students at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), leveraging and combining the Center's nexus of disciplines. This document describes 1) how the founding members built the Stanford Laptop Orchestra from laptops, IKEA salad bowls, amplifier kits, car speakers, meditation mats and pillows, commodity input devices, and custom software, 2) the initial performances of SLOrk, including a large-scale outdoor concert, as well as a networked concert between Stanford and Beijing, and 3) the Stanford Laptop Orchestra as a classroom. We hope to present a history (and future) of the laptop orchestra.

I. Introduction

The Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) is a large-scale, computer-mediated ensemble that explores cutting-edge technology in combination with conventional musical contexts - while radically transforming both. Founded in 2008 by director Ge Wang and students, faculty, and staff at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), 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. 

Offstage, the ensemble serves as a one-of-a-kind learning environment that explores music, computer science, composition, and live performance in a naturally interdisciplinary way. It is also provides a unique research platform for exploring new performance paradigms, new instruments, as well as novel uses of technology. The Stanford Laptop Orchestra fully embodies the aesthetics of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) (cite XXX), both realizing its vision for an ensemble while extending it, and leveraging CCRMA's nature nexus of disciplines (Music, Electrical Engineering, Cognition, Physical Interaction Design, Performance, and Computer Science, etc.) to explore new worlds. Like PLOrk, SLOrk uses the ChucK programming language (cite XXX) as its primary software platform for sound synthesis/analysis, instrument design, performance, and pedagogy.

In this document, we chronicle the adventures of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra from its instantiation to its current form. We describe the process by which over 30 faculty, students, and staff worked together to build the ensemble, starting with designing and building the SLOrk hemispherical speaker arrays out of wooden salad bowls, car speakers, amplifier kits, and many other spare parts, resulting in 20 speaker arrays presenting 120 independently addressable channels of audio. We also describe the ingredients of in putting together SLOrk, from laptops, to breakfast tables, meditation mats and pillows, joysticks, wiimotes, MIDI controllers, etc.. In Section 4, we describe some of the major performances and the ideas behind them, including a large-scale outdoor concert, a live networked concert with musicians in Beijing, as well as an "electronic chamber music" performance featuring pieces by the members of the ensemble. We then discuss the SLOrk classroom, and conclude with a look to the future, including integration with MoPhO, the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra.

II. SLOrk Aesthetic and Related Work

The Stanford Laptop Orchestra embodies an aesthetic that is also central to the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (cite XXX), or PLOrk - the first ensemble of this kind, while fully leveraging CCRMA's natural intersection of disciplines (Music, Electrical Engineering, Cognition, Physical Interaction Design, Performance, and Computer Science, etc.) to explore new possibilities in research, musical performance, and education.

The SLOrk aesthetic is comprised of several components, one of which is "meta-instruments" coupled with speaker arrays that more closely approximates how traditional acoustic instruments radiates sound during performance, offering a much more intimate and localize sound sources. Another component of the aesthetic is that the ensemble is as much a laptop orchestra as it is a "laptop-human orchestra". Perhaps ironically, the sheer critical of technology in the laptop orchestra context increases the symbiotic and fundamental need for humans. Ensembles like PLOrk and SLOrk seek not to replace humans with computer, but rather find "sweet spots" that maximizes the specialties of each - computers with their precision, possibility for new sounds, and tireless nature, combined with the intentions, expressiveness, and social engagement of humans. In this sense, the laptop can be thought of as an entirely different race of being that can achieve great synergy with its human counterpart. Furthermore, SLOrk believes in the laptop orchestra as a potential new classroom for interdisciplinary, experiential learning, but naturally combining music, sound synthesis and analysis, computer science, and live performance.

Additional laptop-mediated ensembles have also been emerging, including CMLO: Carnegie Mellon's Laptop Orchestra (cite XXX), MiLO: the Milwaukee Laptop Orchestra (cite XXX), the Worldscape Orchestra (cite XXX), with recent and upcoming ensembles in Tokyo, Moscow, Oslo and Bangkok. These ensembles each offer their vision on what a laptop orchestra can be. While these may be quite different from that of SLOrk (and PLOrk), it is consistent with the idea that a laptop orchestra is meant to be open-ended like the computer itself, and awaits human creativity to shape it and use it. Perhaps in this sense, the laptop orchestra is a "meta-orchestra" - a platform for crafting potentially many different laptop orchestras. It is perhaps in the wide range of possibilities that attract practitioners to computer as an expressive medium, and therein also lies the difficulty, for the notion of constraints can be as important as potential, and the former is not always easy to formulate and leverage with the general purpose computer.

It is with a holistic combination of these ideas and notions that the founding members of SLOrk set out to create the ensemble. The follow sections chronicle the process and the results.

III. Building the Ensemble

This chronicles the building of SLOrk.

A. Pre Laptop Orchestra people of CCRMA

B. Hemispherical Speaker Design and Construction

C. Integration

IV. Performances

A. Sonic SLOrk Sculptures - first outdoors laptop orchestra performance - 20 stations at Stanford University's New Guinea Sculpture Garden - getting power - guests, pieces

B. Concert with China - first telematic concert - SLOrk, Stanford New Ensemble, and musicians from the Central Conservatory of China

C. SLOrktastic Chamber Music

D. MacWorld 2009 - features MoPhO

V. Classroom

A. Vision

B. Instantiation

C. Methodology

VI. Future Work

A. Vision of SLOrk

B.

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