Friday, November 16, 2007
World's largest digital orchestra makes its debut
The Guardian: "Technology's relentless advance has finally invaded the timeless world of the cello, bassoon and other orchestral instruments, with the debut of the largest digital orchestra in the world. Fifty music students at York University staged a hi-tech twist on the traditional symphony last night by sitting on a concert hall floor and playing nothing but laptop computers."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
This reminds me of a advertisement by a major IT brand on the super pixel, super clarity screen of their new product. The advertisement was done with an orchestra playing to a conductor who is "conducting from home" via webcam. Hence the orchestra was playing "to the laptop" on the stand.
When the final piece ended, one of the musicians turned the laptop to face the audience, with the conductor taking his bow.
I found that advertisement very interesting as it showed how technology can be used to achieve productivity. Technology is not only here to stay, but to bring us to a higher level of efficiency and productivity. We have indeed come a long way from our grandfather's times where phones were even scarely sceen.
I know an old man, who is probably the only one I know now who does not carry a mobile phone, writes his directorial notes on paper etc. Seeing those great words in his handwriting just makes it so lovely.
I am not complaining about Technology, but I am not about to give up the various touch of life as easily as well.
This seems like a really cool idea, but I highly doubt it will replace real orchestras anytime soon. There is something about watching people play real instruments that is completely captivating.
I see almost no threat of this replacing real orchestras, but seriously, how cool is that? A full orchestra of mac books can create a symphony. That is just so much fun and is a lot of what experimental performance art is about. Technology is certainly taking us in interesting places, allowing us to rely more heavily on technology. There is always a human element that cannot compare to digital music.
As great as the digital instruments may sound or as easy as they may be to play I will always prefer the real thing. There is an elegance and a simplicity to doing things yourself. I don't like photoshop as much as the real thing either, I'd always rather have actual contact with the paper. I would think the same may be true of instruments.
This is what my brother is doing right now. He has been writing music for years now and has composed come truly beautiful pieces on the computer. He is able to put together an entire orchestra by himself. And this way he is able to share his work with others and they can actually hear what he has created. What he is doing now is trying to learn different instruments so he can actually play them, and then compose pieces. He did one project at the community college back home with his friends where he wrote the pieces on the computer for a piano, violin, guitar and harp, and then gave his friends the music to play. He just had to make sure the music wasn't too difficult to they could actually play it live.
This doesn't seem like such a surprise as the next step in music. There have been piano softwares and audio softwares around for a while, it was only a matter of time before you could have a full orchestral creation on your computer. I wouldn't really want to go see someone on their computer, or multiple people on their computer creating these pieces. The clicking of the mouse might make me insane for one. But the idea that the hand gestures were making some sort of visual aid definitely sounds like something I might enjoy seeing. I wish there was a little more information about how the music was delivered to the audience.
Post a Comment