Research Group

Computers are becoming smaller and advanced sensing technologies are becoming more accessible to musicians. These trends allow musicians to create novel interfaces that promote the development of new music performance, new musical practices, and new art forms in general. Besides studying the practical aspects of prototyping new interfaces, we also research theory for conceiving of new interfaces and classifying them.

Research and Education in Interdisciplinary Art.

The Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO) is a new repertoire-based ensemble using mobile phones (e.g., iPhones) as the primary musical instrument. Far beyond ring-tones, MoPhO's interactive musical works take advantage of the unique technological capabilities of today's hardware and software, transforming multi-touch screens, built-in accelerometers, built-in microphones, GPS, data networks, and computation into powerful and yet mobile chamber meta-instruments.

MoPhO was instantiated in 2007 at CCRMA, Stanford University, by faculty member and director Ge Wang, Deutsche Telekom senior research scientist (now Michigan faculty member) Georg Essl, and visiting CCRMA researcher Henri Penttinen, with CCRMA Artistic Coordinator Chryssie Nanou, 2007-2008 MA/MST students, and generous support from Nokia. MoPhO performed its first public concert in January 2008.

The Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) is a large-scale, computer-mediated ensemble that explores cutting-edge technology in combination with conventional musical contexts - while radically transforming both. Founded in 2008 by director Ge Wang and students, faculty, and staff at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), this unique ensemble comprises more than 20 laptops, human performers, controllers, and custom multi-channel speaker arrays designed to provide each computer meta-instrument with its own identity and presence. The orchestra fuses a powerful sea of sound with the immediacy of human music-making, capturing the irreplaceable energy of a live ensemble performance as well as its sonic intimacy and grandeur. At the same time, it leverages the computer's precision, possibilities for new sounds, and potential for fantastical automation to provide a boundary-less sonic canvas on which to experiment with, create, and perform music.

Offstage, the ensemble serves as a one-of-a-kind learning environment that explores music, computer science, composition, and live performance in a naturally interdisciplinary way. SLOrk uses the ChucK programming language as its primary software platform for sound synthesis/analysis, instrument design, performance, and education.

The Chavín de Huántar Archaeological Acoustics Project was founded at CCRMA in 2007 to investigate the acoustics and sound-producing instruments of Chavín de Huántar, an Andean formative ritual center in the north-central sierra of Peru. The project has involved researchers across disciplines and institutions, and continues under the direction of prinicipal investigator, Miriam Kolar (CCRMA Ph.D. 2013).