Fall 2006 PLOrk members:

Alan Tormey | Ananya Misra | Andrea Mazzariello | Anne Hege | Ge Wang | John Fontein | Laurie Hollander | Matt Hoffman | Margaret R. Daniel | Michael Hammond | Perry Cook | Rebecca Fiebrink | Samson Young | Scott Elmegreen | Scott Smallwood | Spencer Salazar

The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) is a newly established ensemble of computer-based musical meta-instruments, founded by Dan Trueman and Perry Cook, with Scott Smallwood and Ge Wang. Each instrument consists of a laptop, a multi-channel hemispherical speaker, and a variety of control devices (keyboards, graphics tablets, sensors, etc.). In addition, PLOrk makes extensive use of a new music programming language called ChucK, which allows the performers to develop new code for (and even during) performance. The instructors and students who make up the ensemble act as performers, researchers, composers, and software developers. The challenges are many: what kinds of sounds can we create? how can we physically control these sounds? how do we compose with these sounds? There are also social questions with musical and technical ramifications: how do we organize a dozen players in this context? with a conductor? via a wireless network?

http://plork.cs.princeton.edu/