Stanford Laptop Orchestra Premiere in an Networked Performance with Beijing April 29, 2008, Tuesday 8 P.M

Pacific Rim of Wire: Stanford Laptop Orchestra Premiere in an Networked Performance with Beijing April 29, 2008, Tuesday 8 p.m. Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University

Featuring special guests: Chris Chafe (Stanford, celletto), Hongmei Yu (Beijing, erhu), Bruce Gremo (Beijing, wind controllers), Jingjing Lou (Stanford), and the Stanford New Ensemble, conducted by Jindong Cai (Stanford)

Network researchers and engineers: Stanford: Juan-Pablo Caceres, Rob Hamilton, Deepak Iyer, Ge Wang, and Chris Chafe China: Hao Ma, Ken Fields

--- Program

Drone Dan Trueman

This is part of a series of works and experiments with using onboard sensors (found on newer Apple and other laptops, intended to protect the hard drives in the event of sudden motion) to control sonic and musical parameters. The players have control over volume, pitch, and timbre via the onboard accelerometers and trackpad.

CliX Ge Wang

In this piece, human operators type to make sounds, while their machines synthesize, synchronize, and spatialize the audio. Every key on the computer keyboard (upper/lower-case letters, numbers, symbols) is mapped to a distinct pitch (using the key’s ASCII representation) and when pressed, emits a clicking sound that is synchronized in time to a common pulse. A (human) conductor coordinates frequency range, texture, movement, and timing. Non-specific Gamelan Taiko Fusion Perry R. Cook and Ge Wang

This piece is an experiment in human controlled, but machine synchronized percussion ensemble performance. Various percussive sounds are temporally positioned by the SLOrk players, and the piece gradually transitions from tuned bell timbres to drums as the texture and density grows.

On the Floor Scott Smallwood

The first in a series of pieces to explore gaming and individual representations of similar sounds, this piece recreates the soundscape of a casino. Written in the ChucK programming language, each instrument is a virtual slot machine. Each player begins with a certain number of credits, and simply plays the game until he or she is out of money. The program emulates the sound of a slot machine, but after a threshold is reached, the sound world changes, becoming more abstract. So, as players begin to lose money, the soundscape changes from being a specific place to being a sonic abstraction of that space. The conductor has the ability to monitor the group, and to affect the odds of any specific player. In this way, the conductor may extend or shorten the length of the piece by keeping tabs on players who are winning or losing too much.

Take it for Granite Perry R. Cook

This sonic landscape was mined from recordings of stone sculptor Jonathan Shor’s working of a large piece of granite. The composer recorded Shor's drilling, placing shims, tapping the shims, and the wonderful sound of millions of years of energy being released as the stones split. The laptop orchestra players manipulate these sounds via a ChucK program that allows them to change proporties of the sounds. Eventually, a rhythmic pattern emerges (the striking) wherein the individual SLOrk players control both texture and synchronization.

TBA Ge Wang

On-the-fly programming, or live coding, is the practice of writing code in real-time to create music. This piece is our first attempt at large scale, group live coding (15 humans/laptops) to create a single sound world. Players, divided into squadrons, follow instructions from a conducting live coder, who issues directives both in the form of code fragments (in the ChucK language) and sentence fragments (in the English language). In keeping with the crucial live coding tenet of revealing the process to the audience, the conducting machine will be projected 1) for all to observe and 2) as a means of instructing the ensemble.

Players begin with a simple code template, which they modify over the course of the performance to create and sculpt sound. Operations include code modifications, adding code (+) to be rendered into sound, or replacing existing code (=) with updates. "Rally points" are set throughout the template to coordinate group coding bombardments. The piece alternates between detailed code changes and sections in which players are encouraged to improvise. In on-the-fly programming, the code is the instrument; and it is played via the act of programming. Also, we never really know what's going to happen next (expect glorious disasters). Until it's performed, the piece remains "TBA" to all, including us...

Crystalis Ge Wang

Originally created for the Ear to the Earth Festival in NYC, this piece is a sonic rumination of crystal caves in the clouds, where the only sounds are those of the wind and the resonances of the crystals. It uses two simple instruments called the crystalis and wind-o-lin. These instruments make use of the laptop keyboard (which controls pitch and resonance) and the trackpad (which the players “bow” in various patterns to generate sound).

(intermission)

One Who Moves Without Direction Jingjing Lou

A multi-media piece written for solo flute (double piccolo), 2 violin, 1 violoncello, 2 percussion, laptop orchestra, lighting, acting, conductors and Chinese calligrapher.

In C Terry Riley

We present a special networked performance of Terry Riley's In C, for laptop orchestra, er-hu, wind controller, and celleto. In C can be played by any number of people, and consists of 53 short, numbered musical phrases; each phrase may be repeated an arbitrary number of times. Each musician has control over which phrase he or she plays: players are encouraged to play the phrases starting at different times, even if they are playing the same phrase (and in our case, the laptop players have interactive control over timbre and articulation of the phrase being played). The musical ensemble should try to stay within two to three phrases of each other. The phrases must be played in order, although some may be skipped. It is often customary for one musician (in this case a computer) to play the note C in repeated eighth or quarter notes. This drone functions as a metronome and is referred to as "The Pulse".

Improvisation Telematica by Chris Chafe, Hongmei Yu, Bruce Gremo, Juan-Pablo Caceres

A tele-improvisation between the Beijing and Stanford.

Tuning Meditations Pauline Oliveros

(stay tuned for special instructions!)

--- Composer and Performer Bio's

Stanford Laptop Orchestra 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 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 environment and classroom that explores music, computer science, composition, and live performance in a unique and naturally interdisciplinary way. (http://ccrma.stanford.edu/groups/slork/)

Ge Wang Ge Wang received his B.S. in Computer Science in 2000 from Duke University, PhD (soon!) in Computer Science (advisor Perry Cook) in 2008 from Princeton University, and is currently an Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). His research interests include interactive software systems (of all sizes) for computer music, programming languages, sound synthesis and analysis, music information retrieval, new performance ensembles (e.g., laptop orchestra) and paradigms (e.g., live coding), visualization, interfaces for human-computer interaction, interactive audio over networks, and methodologies for education at the intersection of computer science and music.

Ge is the chief architect and co-creator of the ChucK audio programming language, and the Audicle environment. He was a founding developer and co-director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), the founder and director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk), a co-creator of the TAPESTREA sound design environment, and a lead developer of audio visualizations such as sndpeek. Ge composes and performs via various electro-acoustic and computer-mediated means, including with SLOrk and PLOrk, with Perry as a live coding duo, and with Princeton graduate student and comrade Rebecca Fiebrink in a duo exploring new performance paradigms, cool audio software, and great food.

Chris Chafe Chris Chafe is a composer/ cellist / music researcher with an interest in computer music composition and interactive performance. He has been a long-term denizen of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Stanford University where he directs the center and teaches computer music courses. His doctorate in music composition was completed at Stanford in 1983 with prior degrees in music from the University of California at San Diego and Antioch College. Two yearlong research periods were spent at IRCAM, and the Banff Center for the Arts developing methods for computer sound synthesis based on physical models of musical instrument mechanics. A current project, "SoundWIRE", explores musical collaboration and network evaluation using high-speed internets for high-quality sound.

Jingjing Lou

Jindong Cai

Hongmei Yu Hongmei Yu is Erhu Soloist and Associate Professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China. She regularly appears as soloist with major Chinese orchestras, including the Chinese National Traditional Orchestra, the China Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hong Kong Chinese Traditional Orchestra, and the China National Symphony Orchestra. In addition, she has performed in major concert venues around the world, including Carnegie and Avery Fisher Halls in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Davis Symphony Hall in San Francisco, Symphony Orchestra Center in Chicago, the Beijing Concert Hall, the Hong Kong Cultural Center, the Salle Cortot in Paris, the Vienna Musikverein, the Sydney Opera House and most recently at Walt Disney Hall's Redcat Theater in Los Angeles. Recent awards include the China Golden Record Award for Best Solo Recording. She is the recipient of the Promusicis International Award in New York City. She is the first Chinese musician to win the coveted Indie Award (1999) in the category of Best Traditional World Music for the CD entitled String Glamour. Another solo CD, Red Plum Blossom Capriccio won the Best Chinese Musical Art Production in 1998.

Ken Fields Canada Research Chair in Art and Technology Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Calgary Adjunct Professor, Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing

Ken Fields engaged in interdisciplinary studies across multiple departments (art, music, linguistics, computer and cognitive sciences), receiving a Doctorate in Media Arts from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2000. Continuing to pursue uncharted territory, Ken moved to China (2000-2008) to participate in the development of nascent digital arts/music programs at China's Central Conservatory of Music (Professor in the China Electronic Music Center, CEMC) and Peking University (Associate Professor in the School of Software, Department of Digital Art and Design). His domain of practice lies within the area of telematic arts – more specifically digital music - while theoretically focusing on issues related to ontology and the technology of inquiry. Ken is presently regional editor for the Journals of Organised Sound and ACM’s Computers in Entertainment and a member of the international peer review panel for LABS: Leonardo Abstracts Service.

Bruce Gremo

--- Acknowledgments

The Stanford Laptop Orchestra was made possible by generous funding from the Office of the Dean of Humanity and Sciences. Many thanks to faculty, staff, and students at CCRMA, as well as the Music Department at large for their incredible support. Special thanks to Mark Applebaum and the Stanfjord Improvisation Collective [sic] for helping to nurture SLOrk. Many thanks to the Central Conservatory of China and the Beijing University; to Xiaofu Zhang for his support.