CCRMA's SLOrk Featured in Wired Magazine

The Aural Magic of Stanford's Laptop Orchestra

Ten days before the big concert, the members of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra are performing technology triage. Rehearsal has only just started, but already, things seemed to be falling apart. First there was trouble with the network that connects the laptops to one another. Then one of the laptops crashed; its human component, a graduate student named Juan Sierra, groans loudly. One of the hemispherical speakers emits a low, crunchy noise, like a fart.

The orchestra members have gathered at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics to rehearse a new kind of musical composition. Together, sitting on meditation pillows in front of MacBooks, they create songs that stretch the definition of music. The orchestra plays laptops like accordions, turns video games into musical scores, and harnesses face-tracking software to turn webcams into instruments. But at this rehearsal, the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) looks less like the symphony of the future and more like an overworked IT department.

"Slorkians! Lend me your ears," shouts Ge Wang, the SLOrk's founder and director. He wears a grey T-shirt and black pants, as he does every day, his black hair down to his shoulders. Wang gives the group five more minutes to troubleshoot and then, he says, it's time for rehearsal to begin. Read more here...