META-ORCHESTRA

The Meta-Orchestra is a flexible group for practical performance and research into the use of interfaces and extended technologies in the arts. Starting as a European project in 2000, one of the founding ideas was that the orchestra could exist with changing members and an essentially multi-disciplinary character. The term 'orchestra' was chosen to describe an asymmetric collective of artists of different specialities: music, visual arts, architecture, dance, design. In this orchestra each electronically extended instrument or environment represents personal, idiosyncratic solutions to the complexities of performing with computer technologies. It is found that co-ordination and collaboration within such an asymmetric group requires a radical approach to both score systems and the structuring of space in time. The following projects of the Meta-Orchestra show the evolution of these ideas.