The laptop orchestra as classroom

In its inaugural semester (Fall 2005), the Princeton Laptop Orchestra began as a seminar comprising 15 freshmen undergraduates (3 women, 12 men), 15 laptop and six-channel speaker-array stations, and equipment for networking and transportation (see Trueman 2006; Trueman et al. 2007; and Smallwood et al. in this issue of Computer Music Journal for details). The authors of this article served as the teaching corps but also participated in all other aspects of the ensemble. Software such as the ChucK programming language (Wang and Cook 2003), Max/MSP (Puckette 1991), the Audicle (Wang and Cook 2004b), miniAudicle (Salazar, Wang, and Cook 2006), sndpeek (Misra, Wang, and Cook 2005), and hardware input devices and sensors comprised our teaching tools and platform. A second PLOrk seminar and ensemble was taught the following semester (Spring 2006) as an upper-level undergraduate elective in both the Department of Music and Department of Computer Science. A third seminar took place in Fall 2006, focusing on composing and programming for laptop orchestra. All three courses required students to submit a short application. The students were selected on the basis of enthusiasm, thoughtfulness, and balance to the class,no explicit technical or musical background was required. All 15 students in Fall 2005 entered the class with no prior programming experience but with great interest and varying backgrounds in music. The Spring-semester students included 25 undergraduate sophomores, juniors, and seniors, as well as graduate students with a wide range of technical experience and musical training. The Fall 2006 class was a graduate seminar, consisting of Music and Computer Science graduate students and three undergraduate PLOrk "alumni. " The PLOrk classroom takes place in two major formats and locations. There is the weekly class meeting at McAlpin Auditorium (see Figure 1), a rehearsal space shared with the traditional university orchestra, choir, and other Music Department ensembles. Each PLOrk class is scheduled to last 3.5 hours, at the beginning of which the members of the orchestra transport 15 sets of laptops, racks, hemispherical speakers, mats, pillows, and sensors to the classroom, where they are connected, powered, and booted. Additionally, a wireless (and sometimes wired) local area network (LAN) is established, and video projection and sound amplification are connected from the teaching machine. In this classroom mode, activities range from presentation of basic programming concepts, introduction and playing of compositions, individual and group student presentations of assignments, and rehearsal as an ensemble. In addition, students are taught to troubleshoot any hardware or software problems that they may encounter with their station, and they are expected to learn how to set up and "tear down" quickly and efficiently. The other classroom venue is a smaller studio space (see Figure 2). It houses seven ready-to-use PLOrk stations and a studio machine with a projector for teaching and hosting a professional soundediting environment. The PLOrk studio can hold an audience of up to 15 people. Weekly voluntary help sessions on topics such as programming in ChucK and Max/MSP take place here. In addition, students gain access to the space 24 hours a day to work on assignments, practice pieces, program, compose, "hang out," ask questions, and get help from instructors and peers. Whereas topics presented in the larger rehearsal space tend to be high-level, this Computer Music Journal, 32:1, pp. 26-37, Spring 2008 © 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.