we are having the annual spring concert of slork tonight at 8.00 pm in dinkelspiel auditorium at stanford. the diversity of the slork members this time has made a very interesting combination of instruments and compositions which is a new and unique experience.
we are not playing any of the laptop orchestra classics such as drones, clix and chrystalis which i all love but has been performed too many times. all the pieces are brand new and also the implementations behind them.
my group has worked on a twitter piece. we have a python server that parses all the tweets related to a couple of hash-words (for example tonight will be #slork and #music) and makes trees of the tweets regarding their closeness in the number of words they have in common. then the server sends osc messages to chuck and processing where we sonify and visualize the tweets. the sonification of the tweets is more like an echo of each tweet arriving in the engine and we change the timbre, sound sequences, modes and tempo in real time.
the concept of the piece is to engage performers and audience in an interactive experience. during the concert slorkers will be tweeting on their slork machines and audience can tweet on their smart phones. if they want their tweets to be seen and heard they can use #slork, #music and #technology in the text of their tweet. if you can't make it to the concert, make sure you take part by tweeting.
there are also several other interesting compositions, from a "virtual headbang orchestra" and a "bell choir" to "sonification of the human brain waves".
