Yesterday when I went onto Apple’s website I saw an article at the bottom that really caught my attention. It was titled “Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk): Musical Macs.” As soon as I saw that I was interested, and besides that who has ever hear of SLOrk?

The article on Apple’s website was quite informative and gave a good background on the idea of SLOrk (which stands for Stanford Laptop Orchestra). But that’s not all I wanted to know, I really wanted to see a performance. Searching for SLOrk on YouTube only brought up one relevant result (which can be seen at the bottom of this article), and there were numerous more videos titled with Stanford Laptop Orchestra.

The interesting thing with this “Laptop Orchestra” is that they do not play real instruments and route it through the computers for distortion, but rather the Macbook is the instument. Their teacher/composer/conductor/programmer is Ge Wang. He developed a program that allows for almost any beginner to start making music within 30 minutes. This is unique since music can be made through virtual instuments on the Mac, through trackpad movements, key strokes, and through the motion sensor. The motion sensor is definitely the most interesting part of this. Who wouldn’t want to tilt their laptop one way and have a certain tone come out?

Having an orchestra made up of laptops like this shows how much technology and society has evolved, and how the new can be mixed with the old. I actually really enjoyed listening to their music, it shows each persons unique style of music and when mixed with everyone elses, it is quite an experience. Watch the videos below and tell me what you think.