The United Laptop Orchestra started as a follow-up project out of Stephan Athanas’ MaxMSP-course at the Hochschule Lucerne in 2011. The students were able to built their own synthesizer & soundprocessing MaxMSP-patches.
Hochschule Luzern – Design Bachelor & Master Exhibition, 2011, Lucerne/Switzerland
Radio Lora – Elektromagnetischer Sommer 2011, Zürich/Switzerland
Due to my practical experience in Processing, I developed several sound-visualizations that made use of Processing’s internal FFT-analysis functions combined with some basic interaction possibilities. The signal was routed to a custom MaxMSP-patch to make use of basic videomixer-possibilities.
Tracklist:
Ligeti
The hungarian/austrian composer György Sándor Ligeti composed “Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes” in 1962. The huge amount of metronomes, each with a slightly different tempo, generates numerous micro-rhythms. But as soon as the listener recognizes the rhythm, it gets lost in the symphonic’s random chaos.
Freq-Out
Each student made use of an individual frequency band and performed custom made sound-processing patches. As a result, a complex soundscape was developed in realtime by four musicians.
Jacques Tati’s “mon oncle” – Revisted – preview
“Mon once”, a comedy by french filmmaker Jacques Tati set into new context by realtime sound-dubbing. The viewers were able to see a preview of the Orchestra’s complete show for the One Minute Festival in Aarau/Switzerland, 2011.
130 BPM
Finally and again in realtime, custom-made beatmachines, looping-patches and experimental “process-everything-to-audio” MaxMSP-constructions were synched to 130 beat per minute to perform a ready-to-dance track.
United Laptop Orchestra – by:
Stephan Athanas, Sabine Haerri, Samuel Frei, André Motz, Michel Winterberg.
MaxMSP _Jitter von 0 auf 100 in 2 Semestern,
Hochschule Luzern, FH Nordwestschweiz,
2011