The development of the laptop ensemble in the 21st century has produced new frameworks for exploring connections between technology, nature and history. What changes when environmental sounds and recordings of earlier music are taken outside of the fixed-media domain and realized through structured improvisations based on listening, gestural control and interactions with malleable digital instruments? The prevalence of the laptop ensemble or orchestra as a workshop or ensemble within post-secondary learning environments has created a platform for exploring novel approaches to music pedagogy in which digital lutherie allows users to move freely through a cultural past and into the future. These classroom or rehearsal settings are also well suited for exploring laptop improvisation in relation to research-creation. With the use of sampling and synthesis to recall and emulate familiar sounds and musical works, interactions with and through laptop instruments can act as a tool for knowledge dissemination. The flexibility of the instrument and the ensemble also creates opportunities for building connections between technologies (e.g., coding), compositional structures and the natural sound environment. In a discussion of music for laptop ensemble that has explored these relationships, we focus on works that were played and workshopped during the author’s time spent directing the Cincinnati Integrated Laptop Orchestra Project (CiCLOP), and examine the intentions and results of the ongoing research-creation project Code, Sound and Power.