ShanWang-LookingOutwards 11

I found the TED talk of Ge Wang on computer music to be extremely inspiring. His projects are mainly on the implementation of of programming languages in interactive software design for computer, mobile and social music. Demonstrated in this video, one of his focus is building instruments for the Stanford Laptop Orchestra, in which he utilizes “Chuck”—the programming language he developed— to create ensembles of laptops, humans and special hemispherical speaker made from wood bowls. The instruments provide acoustic feeling to the computer generated music, and I saw great potential in the performances that the players can do as they adjust the gesture of playing.

The Smule app created by Ge Wang is also interesting in terms of user experiences such as actually blowing to the microphone of iPhones to play music. Both of these projects demonstrated possibilities in bringing music to everyone that has no access or cannot afford different kinds of instruments.