If we were playing a game of free association and someone said: netbooks, Wiimotes and hemispherical-speaker arrays, I would probably think: planet-destroying lasers, or possibly: Berlin. Director of the DISIS Interactive Sound & Intermedia Studio at Virginia Tech would definitely think: world’ s first Linux laptop orchestra, or as he likes to think of it, L2Ork.

Following in the footsteps of pioneering research at Stanford and Princeton, and haloed with curling puffs of soldering-iron smoke, Ivica and a small army of Virginia Tech faculty and students have been working since early 2009 to construct the sonic infrastructure for their cybernetic marriage of technology and art. With an anticipated unveiling of The Virgina Tech L2Ork in December of this year only a few months away, we sat down with the mustachioed kingpin of L2Ork for a glimpse into the future of open source audio performance. 

L2Ork (with 2 actually being an exponent) stands for Linux Laptop Orchestra. Since we are trying to maintain compatibility with the two other similar laptop orchestras currently in existence PLOrk (Princeton Laptop Orchestra) and SLOrk (Stanford Laptop Orchestra), we settled on the idea of propagating same name format. Being to the best of my knowledge the first laptop orchestra that relies exclusively upon Linux, we decided to use that as part of our branding identity.

So, is it fair to say you a L2Orker? What’s the proper nomenclature?

As for the L2ORker part, believe it or not very early on in the project we actually had a discussion regarding L2Orker vs. L2Orkist (as in composer vs. pianist). Ultimately we settled with L2Orkist because it phonetically reminded us of “locust,” something that we preferred over the alternatives (e.g. “lurker”). So from a pronunciation perspective, I would say the 2 is silent.

How far along is the Virginia Tech L2Ork project?

The project officially came into being this past spring and is envisioned to become a long-term initiative through Virginia Tech DISIS (Digital Interactive Sound and Intermedia Studio, part of the Music Dept. and Collaborative for Creative Technologies in the Arts and Design (CCTAD) initiative). We are now in the first semester of working with the ensemble and discovering various possibilities and/or ideas on how to utilize its newfound potential.

Do you have plans to take it on the road?

Our first performance event is tentatively scheduled for December of 2009. After that, who knows.

When I think about computer-based music, Linux is only the… ah… third or fourth platform that springs to mind.  Does pro audio need Linux solutions, or does Linux need pro audio solutions?

One could easily argue this question to death. Some would say Linux is already there, others would argue it will never get there. I personally do not wish to get involved in such debates, as what matters to me in this case is that Linux does the job, and based on tests and assessments we conducted for the purpose of this project, Linux does it better than the alternatives. Did we have to tweak a few things before we had Linux running just the way we wanted? Sure thing, but that is exactly what we needed and what Linux allows us to do.

For what it’s worth, at DISIS I advocate an OS-agnostic approach - we have OSX machines interspersed among Windows and Linux workstations and support all of them equally - as I believe any OS that brings something uniquely valuable into a creative environment is worthy of being a part of it. Ultimately, it is not the OS that makes art great but rather the content of the art itself.

Tell us about the hemispherical speakers you are building? Do they sound as cool as they look?

The speakers stem from a scientific research conducted at Princeton many years ago. Their advantage over a traditional speaker is that when placed on the floor they project in all directions. One could ideally envision us using a spherical speaker (and this was also something that Princeton folks explored) that would truly be omnidirectional but its stable placement in performance settings would make it too cumbersome.

So, what’s the big deal about omnidirectionality of a sound source? Unlike traditional amplified performances that commonly rely upon a sound system whose sole purpose is typically to provide the same nearly-monaural experience for the audience (e.g. having a drummer on the right side of a stage rarely translates to the sound actually propagating from that direction), hemispherical speakers allow us to free ourselves from the reliance upon unpredictable PA conditions and more so to project sound in a way that in many ways more accurately reflects the way a traditional acoustic orchestra projects.

For instance, in a traditional concert setting an audience member will easily discern when the horns have joined in or when the violins are having their big moment, not only because of their instruments’ sound color but also because of their location on-stage and consequently the direction from which the sound originates. When we play any acoustic instrument, even though they are built to project towards the audience, their projection is actually a result of complex interactions between the instrument, objects in its immediate vicinity that filter certain trajectories of the emitted sound (e.g. performer’s body holding a violin), and perhaps most importantly inevitability of sound’s propagation in all directions at varying levels including reflections from the proscenium, ceiling, etc. Likewise, such a design offers unique creative opportunities, such as projecting different sounds in different directions and then in turn listening to their interaction through reflections.

L2Ork therefore relies upon these speakers as it gives us that unique approach to music making that more closely reflects traditional concert environment and then marries it with bleeding-edge technology.

I’ve got to ask, what’s the deal with the Wiimotes? Where do they fit in?

Wiimotes are simply ultra-affordable input controllers. Before the Wii revolution a common 3D accelerometer would run upwards of US $70. Now we have a Wiimote and a nunchuk that gives you 6 accelerometers, an IR camera, an analog stick and tons of buttons at a fraction of that cost. So, once you combine that with the versatility of postures and gestures reproducible by human arms, we have seemingly an endless array of possibilities on how to utilize said controllers and more importantly how to shape them into an engaging performance practice that drives a virtual instrument (in this case a netbook) through juxtaposition of traditional performance and visual choreography.

Of the audio solutions (both hardware and software) you’re working with, what would be applicable for digital musicians beyond the scope of the recital hall? Should the bedroom producers, ghetto tech garage bands or digital DJs be keeping an eye on Linux and L2Orks?

Software packages we aim to use as part of L2Ork already have an established audience, particularly in Europe. For instance Pure-Data, currently our main production platform, has a following among computer musicians, engineers, researchers, DJs, VJs, and beyond. More importantly, being open source, it runs on anything from a phone to a mainframe, including Linux, OSX, and Windows. It is essentially a programming environment built by musicians for musicians.

What advantages are there to working with Pure-Data?

Based on its strengths and weaknesses, unavoidably every software tool encourages us to be productive in different ways. Pure-Data or simply Pd does not have traditional tracks and blocks of sound we can drag around a timeline. Rather, it can be seen as a blank canvas that can be populated by a formidable library of unique objects. These objects produce data output at varying rates and under various conditions and thus serve as a foundation for a more complex algorithm or an audio stream. While its learning curve is much steeper than that of conventional music software, I believe that its flexibility also offers great opportunities for the production of a unique sound and consequently uniquely sounding art.

I guess that leads us to the 16 million rupee question: Musically, what should we expect from the ORKestra? 8-bit symphonies? Reimaginations of John Cage? Beatles covers? Or something for which there are yet no words to describe?

Expect the unexpected?

Kidding aside, we don’t know yet what its true potential is, and as such I would definitely want to explore all viable scenarios, from an extension to a classical orchestra (or perhaps co-existence within it), to something entirely new.

Check back for L2Ork event postings on C-T!