Orchestra Machines, Old and New

Abstract

What is ‘orchestral’ about a networked laptop orchestra? And what is network-like about a classical orchestra? This article juxtaposes orchestras, nineteenth-century music machines and twenty-first-century network music projects. Drawing on organology and cybernetics, it asks how these systems connect people and instruments. It considers interaction and coordination in particular networks, from the panharmonicon to PLork, but also their abstract informational topologies. Ultimately, orchestra machines, old and new, involve both technical and social organisation – and, as such, they can be used to problematise the ontological separation of technology and society.

Live Coding the Global Hyperorgan: The Paragraph environment in the indeterminate place

“…They are not a machine but are simply responding to a machine, much like a live coder’ (Sicchio 2021). However, a division of human and machine might conflict with a cybernetic understanding, as ‘a cybernetic epistemology would claim that the system as a whole—not just the human within it—thinks, improvises, and so forth’ De Souza (2018: 10). Thus, viewed as a cybernetic system, our humanity becomes only one of many agencies.…”

“…For him, the goal is to explore a cybernetic system, rather than to create something predictable, and human agency is crucial as input to the systems in all these cases, asking the listener ‘to use [their] humanity to guide [them]’ (Haslam 2020c). The focus in such systems lies on how ‘all the actors co-evolve’ (Latour 1991: 117) and how ‘[a] cybernetic ontology would refuse any strict division between the human and non-human’ (De Souza 2018: 159). The sociological aspects of musical instruments are also interesting in regards to accessibility.…”