Orchestra Hero by Michael Gordon :: Writing for the New York Times, Gordon poses the question: Will scenes like the image to the right from the Guitar Hero video game (image by The Associated Press/Activision) soon include French horns, contrabassoons and triangles? And his answer is, he hopes so.

What is the hottest thing in music right now? A pair of video games ─ Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Anyone can play. The games allow you to become a member of the band. Each game offers a range of pop music hits on game controllers that look and feel like guitars and drums. What makes these video games so much more impressive than “air guitar” is that through the use of something called the instrument game controller the player actually experiences the visceral feeling of performing music. You can even improve if you practice.

Read more here.

Share Festival - Market Forces 2009 :: Performances :: Various Venues, Torino, Italy.

Share Prize: Orchestra Meccanica Marinette plays Nag Hammadi :: November 3 and 5, 2009 at 6:00 p.m. :: Regional Museum of Natural Science at via Giolitti 36, Torino.

The orchestra consists of robot drummers that play steel drums “live”, under the direction of a performer. The interactive rhythms of the OMM sound out the movement, work and machinery of Turin industry. The subtext moves along the lines of the “Nag Hammadi”, the third-century A.D. Gnostic text, before plunging into contemporary mythologies through pieces inspired by the works of Ballard and Burroughs, exploring the relationship between, and the fusion of, human and machine. Continue reading

Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) :: June 4, 2009; 8:00 pm :: Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA.

The Stanford Laptop Orchestra celebrates the conclusion of a wonderful 2008-2009 season with a full-scale laptop orchestra concert. You are cordially invited to join us for an evening of all new works for the full ensemble, in Dinkelspiel Auditorium at Stanford University.

For more information, please visit here and here. Follow SLOrK on Twitter.

The Edith Russ Site for Media Art awards work stipends has awarded a 2009 stipend to The Sine Wave Orchestra (Ken Furudate, Kazuhiro Jo, Daisuke Ishida, Mizuki Noguchi)

The fundamentals of our networked, global and technological culture and our resulting means of interaction are connected by the sine wave. We dance to them on our mp3 players, watch TV because of them and surf their peaks and troughs while making long distance phone calls. Sine waves form an ethereal and omnipresent framework, which become the tactile material the SINE WAVE ORCHESTRA (SWO) sculpts and manipulates through unique participatory sound events. Continue reading

PLOrk/ Matmos/ So Percussion/ Riley Lee :: May 16, 2009; 8:00 - 10:00 pm :: Richardson Auditorium, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ :: Tickets.

Following their performances at The Kitchen in NYC and the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago, the 30-member Princeton Laptop Orchestra will present a program of all new works, in collaboration with renowned sound art duo Matmos, the Brooklyn-based ensemble So Percussion and shakuhachi master Riley Lee. In addition to new arrangements of music from Matmos’s Supreme Balloon and So Percussion’s Amid the Noise, the program will feature works by Michael Hammond, Tom Lieber, Jascha Narveson, Ted Coffey, Cameron Britt, Rebecca Fiebrink, Michael Early and Sean Friar.

They called for professionals and amateur musicians of all ages, locations and instruments to audition for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra by submitting a video performance of a new piece written for the occasion by the renowned Chinese composer Tan Dun. Continue reading

“Once upon a time, orchestras required instruments. Then computers reproduced the sounds of symphonies. Now, band geeks are playing iPhones.

Stanford University’s newest ensemble is called (MoPhO), short for Mobile Phone Orchestra. Its conductor, Ge Wang, is a veteran of Princeton’s Laptop Orchestra (see issue 14.04) and is obsessed with making electronic music as mobile as possible. “The iPhone holds a lot of potential for what kind of music can be made and how it can be made,” Wang says. Continue reading

G.A.P. No. 2 from Dream Addictive on Vimeo.

G.A.P. No.2 is part of a series of electronic prototypes with organic form, designed to simulate generative sound process. The device consists of a set of speakers, amplifier, sensors and Arduino. The organic disposition of elements, like a little sound garden sensitive to movement, stimulates the sensory interaction as a means for manipulating audio. Continue reading

Scores of Light

: Glimmer, by Jason Freeman, engages the concert audience as musical collaborators who do not just listen to the performance but actively shape it. Each audience member is given a battery-operated light stick which he or she turns on and off over the course of the piece. Computer software analyzes live video of the audience and sends instructions to each musician via multi-colored lights mounted on each player’s stand. The piece draws from a long history of interactive music, art, and cinema, but it also engages in current issues regarding the use of technology within orchestral concerts. Many orchestras are currently experimenting with interactive handheld devices and large video displays which attempt to explain the music being performed. But many such devices ultimately create barriers to engaged listening. Glimmer challenges audiences to become active collaborators in the live performance, rather than reinforcing their traditionally passive role. The American Composers Orchestra will perform Glimmer in its world premiere on Friday, January 21st, 2005, 7:30 p.m. at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall (New York). Continue reading