At Princeton University's faculty of music, the students are as happy to tickle a Powerbook's plastics as a piano's ivories. They have their own wireless-networked orchestra: a 15-piece band that can play anything from electropop to avant garde on instruments specially designed to interface with their laptops. A virtual conductor keeps them on the beat. The Princeton Laptop Orchestra, or PLOrk as it is known, has caused something of a sensation in academic circles, and avant-garde musicians are queueing up to compose for them.
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