Plørk, Slörk, and Ikea

The quietly active Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) invades the West Coast! What we didn't hear about the not-so-remarkable Macworld this year was that the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) made its public debut. Using salad bowls from ikea (oh wait, this reminds me of a Michael Zbyszynski of Berkeley's CNMAT mentioned in the nytimes in 2007) they crafted ambisonic-ish speakers. SLork made it onto the apple website, even though Brad Stone didn't feel like mentioning them on his Macworld live blog for the nytimes.

Director/composer Ge Wong has some good and innovative ideas about using the body of the laptop like an instrument (ex. using the trackpad to "bow", tilting the computer to trigger acoustic reactions)... But the whole experience kind of leaves me hanging. What's up with this bizarre (academic) phenomenon? The new "orchestra" revived through Macbooks? Interactivity and democracy through really expensive computers? Are BLOrk (Berkeley Laptop Orchestra) and MiLOrk (MIT Laptop Orchestra) next?

Computers can make music. So what? Sonically and musically, frankly, it's not that exciting. The ensemble employs sounds that were cool in the 60s and 70s sci-fi movies that used tape instead of Max MSP, but wtf, still the same sounds? It's 2009, come on. In fact, Ge Wong himself announces that SLOrk in many ways is a traditional ensemble. Personally, I would find it more interesting if these institutionally cemented laptop orchestras could finally move beyond the "traditional" (in the sense of 19th-century notions of public high culture--the zenith of the large orchestra), and come up with new sounds to fit current uses and meanings of technology and ideas about the public.


Above: Stanford composers disguised as Apple store "Geniuses"? There's a reason apple loves them.

Watch a video of SLOrk in action here!