"The Laptork Experience"

Directors and composers: Esteban Insinger and Fabian Kesler

Musicians: Pablo Hernando, Oscar Gamarra, Miguel Carrizo, Gerard Clement, Matías Sillitti, Esteban Martín, Piero Sabatini, Cesar Nieto

Pictures, films and documentary: Barbara Scotto

   http://laptork.blogspot.com      http://laptork.com.ar

Registered Project  (P) 2008

Laptork would like to thank to SONICA electronic music school and EDIFIER for their support

1) Foreword and Motivation

We begin from the basis that, being in the XXI century, many paradigms regarding the music, the sound, the sound generation and the performance scene, they are in crisis, that is to say, concluding a stage and glimpsing a future that progressively goes real.

The irruption of the electronic science at the beginning of XX century, gave place to later inventions like the synthesizer, allowing to the composer, in a similar way to an abstract painter, to trip in the sound creation from scratch with new timbrical material.

It is also very important in the history of the technology applied to the sound the so called  “Concrete Music”, that took the novel (in that moment) tape sound recorders to register the industrialized growing world.

That was the previous stage for the irruption of the "sampler", (basically a digital recorder/editor), allowing, in a much more retailer and purified way, to capture an aesthetic vision of the physical  world that the artist chooses and incorporates to his artworks, maybe in a pure way, or modified  by the multiple resources of effects and sound processes available nowadays.

So, in comparation with all of these modern inventions, the "orchestra" idea, has not taken at he moment too much implicance of the time steps, and maintains, in most of the cases, the same conception and structure of old centuries, so much from the instrumentation, the articulation of this instruments (that is to say, the technique used to play them), the repertory, the performance scene and the spacialization (technical and poetic use of space in the musical composition and performance).

It is not about a forced hybrid among unconnected material “past-present”, neither of a trivial adaptation of a classic orchestral formation, but rather the idea is to create a conceptually contemporary orchestra, from all the aspects that concern to it, taking the technical and aesthetic possibilities of nowadays, so having conscience as artists of the era in which we are living.

2) The orchestra's practical implementation

The orchestra consists of two directors and eight musicians.

The direction is made through a code of signs based on some traditional expressions but others created by the directors, in order to be able to communicate musical and sound actions related to our instruments (as shooting a button, or a slider) and to characteristic of the music and the sound (as raising up the reverberation level, to close a filter, etc).

A - INSTRUMENTAL ARTICULATION:  Basically, generating the sound through one computer for musician, and homemade sensors, that is to say, electronic instruments of our own production,  connected to the computer to play and to process the live sounds, in realtime, without use of any playback type. The Laptork is always an alive group.

Sound and event triggers, made from simple computer keyboards.

Below to the right, the assignments of the instrument for one of the muscial pieces.

We also use other simple computer peripherals as sensors to play and process the music: mouse, joystick, microphones, keyboards, webcam.

A software instrument created by ourselves for the piece so called “Metal Godzilla”

So, the sensors are heart of our instrumental palette. Thanks to specific software, we can transform their habitual actions in musical expressions, performing conceptually as instruments:

These instruments, the same as the traditional ones, require a training and a technique, as much from the directors like the musicians.

For example: simultaneous actions with two sensors, to incorporate the expressions assigned to each part of the sensor, practical of speed with the instrument, to understand the code of signs created by the directors, etc.

B - SYSTEM OF SOUND EMISSION: Speakers of type “amplified monitor”. One for musician.

This logic offers us great expressive possibilities about the sound space:

The musicians' different distributions, groups for space areas based on musical factors, geometrical figures associated conceptually to the work, space counterpoints, etc, achieving this way a true sound immersion in the audience.

Also, to fact that this speaker is small and portable, allows to adapt the orchestra to different environments and situations, generating specifically a space plan for each place where Laptork will plays alive.

Summarizing: Why we consider that Laptork is a contemporary orchestra? Becasue we can see the relationship with the orchestra concept transfered to the present, where the computers are our sound generators (in a violin they are the strings), the sensors are the exciters (in a violin they are the arch and the fingers), and the speakers are the resonant bodies (in a violin it is the wooden box). Hence we speak of an “orchestra”, because we keep its escence, its concept, but we think it from a modern point of view.

C - COMMUNICATION AND SYNCHRONIZATION AMONG COMPUTERS:  Some works will require the tracking of a rhythmic pattern, or the sound processing among computers.

For those cases,  the simpler communication between them is the wireless net (wi-fi) already incorporated in the same laptops, by means of the OSC protocol (Open Sound Control).

D. USE OF THE SPACE:  The space is one of the newest musical aspects about the expressiveness in music.

From half-filled of XX century, the use of the space is matched in music to other arts that always took it as an expressive mean as the dance and the theater do.

The flexibility of having portable speakers for each musician offers many possibilities about this topic.

Each work will have a specific use of space, based on its expressive necessities. Let us see two possible cases:

3) The orchestra's musical aesthetics

We does not have prejudices regarding the orchestra's style. We think this project as a laboratory where each work implies a discover, a learning as much for the musicians as for the directors.

Therefore there will be works where there is a development of aspects as the rhythm, the harmony but inside a context of a lot of possibilities since there are eight musicians with own computer and speaker. There will be other works with more timbrical and noisy nature, based on recorded sounds, processed or created by ourselves, and of course the richness that gives the mixtures from different sound worlds.

The directors taking sound samples in a tunnel

Regarding the rhythm, we can embrace works with more regular nature, coming closer to electronic music  that  mixes the pop thing with the experimental thing, and also to works without pulse marks, close to tendencies like electroacoustic, ambient, noise, industrial etc.

In synthesis, we think to the style more as a consequence of our searches that as a cause.

Anyway, beacuse of this kind of project, we can also prepare especially a work for a certain place, a certain circusntance, because ofa specific ask or because of a certain aesthetics that inspires us for its particular characteristics.

4) The orchestra's musicians' profile

The profile of the musicians correspond to an artist with musical and art technological knowledge.

Anyway, the orchestra will also act as formative group, because we think this kind of experience is not so common,  nor in the artistic field neither in the technological one, pointing to a creative coalition among the same ones.

We think it is important to generate an idea of real performance in the musicians, being in scene generating art, that it is not the more common situation regarding musicians that use computer on scene.

In the case of Laptork, we don't use any playback type, everything is live and it is generated based on the actions of the musicians, the same thing as in an orchestra using acoustic instruments.

4) Objectives (first stage)

To create a stable base of integral of the orchestra. (COMPLETED)

To have three works as a first stage, for this way to be able to offer the orchestra for live performances. (COMPLETED)

To continue and make deeper our links with different artists to make common projects: musicians, dancers and choreographs, theater directors, actors, performers, painters, vj´s, dj,s, sculptors, architects, designers. (IN PROCESS)

It is important for us the orchestra's didactic and formative side. We aspire to be able to show the orchestra and its internal "kitchen" in art centers, technological centers and mainly in schools and neighbordhood centers from different points far from the main centers, since in general they are who less access have to this type of experiences.

This way, to be able to support or to advise related future projects inspired by our project.

We believe in the idea of sharing experiences and knowledge.

We know that, generally speaking, the musical education has not been upgraded too much in the last decades, so this kind of project could be good for the discovery of many aspects for those that the music has passed in the last 50 years and a possible future through projects of this type. (IN  PROCESS)

Recording of a live DVD in Home Theater 5.1 and then to study the possibility of it edition and distribution. We will aspire to their edition / distribution at national and international.

To not only carry out concerts in academic environments or specialized in contemporary music, but inserting us in other spaces (artistic, technological, educational) in order to make know other ways to generate and to play music, as well as other musical types to audiences that maybe do not have another way to come closer to these.

One of the causes for which the new art expressions are not popular is the lack of diffusion, reason that is not only blame of conservative politicians of many diffusion means but also of the same artists and of certain tendency to the exclusiveness or elitism. We aspire to banish these prejudices by mean of work, blood and dedication.