PLORK: Princeton Laptop Orchestra

Check out what Princeton is working on HERE.

Here's my opinion on the whole thing. I love electronic music, and Princeton might be on to something. They aren't exactly the first to try something like this (maybe the first university). A lot of electronic acts out there are using laptops on a network to make music and send back and forth information to each other, but this might be the largest scale of its' use that I've seen at least.

It is my belief that in its' very essence music is social. Of course their are certain aspects of music that are more personal. People write songs about personal experiences, feelings, etc but they also evoke feelings in the people that listen to them, sort of making it a shared experience. The orchestra kind of has something social going for it, I mean an orchestra in itself is a pretty social event (except for the fact that one person conducts it and the music that's played is usually written by one person.....well some bands are like that too, shit where am I going with this? Actually there's nothing wrong with an orchestra playing the music one person wrote, it's actually extremely impressive that one person can do such a thing. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and the countless other composers are all geniuses. )

Anyway, everyone is in a room together, that's a start. I feel that instead of just following someone's complete direction, all these muscians should each contribute their own musical ideas/sounds/elements to the mix and create an entire sonic landscape. In my opinion that would be much cooler than what I heard on the (above) video. It would also be pretty cool to see what other types of music could be composed through this though as well. Anyway, it'll be interesting to hear how this progresses in the future.

Thanks for reading
-b Funk