Expositions

The first comprehensive introduction to the origins, aspirations, and evolution of live coding. Performative, improvised, on the fly: live coding is about how people interact with the world and each other via code. In the last few decades, live coding has emerged as a dynamic creative practice, gaining attention across cultural and technical fields—from music and the visual arts to computer science. Live Coding: A User's Manual is the first comprehensive introduction to the practice and a broader cultural commentary on the potential for live coding to open up deeper questions about contemporary cultural production and computational culture. This multiauthored book—by artists and musicians, software designers, and researchers—provides a practice-focused account of the origins, aspirations, and evolution of live coding, including expositions from a wide range of live coding practitioners. In a more conceptual register, the authors consider liveness, temporality, and knowledge in relation to live coding, alongside speculating on the practice's future forms

Anatomical Intelligence: Live coding as performative dissection

This article describes the method of ‘dissective’ live coding, as developed through the artistic-research project Anatomies of Intelligence. In this work we investigate how live coding can be used as an approach for performative explorations of a data corpus and a machine learning algorithm operating on this corpus. The artistic framework of this project collides early Enlightenment-era anatomical epistemologies with contemporary machine learning, creating a fertile space for novel, embodied artistic methods to emerge. We engage audiences in an immersive, live-coded experience where image and sound are driven by our dissective approach, revealing the underlying rhythms and structures of a machine learning algorithm running live on an artist-made dataset. To support these performances we have developed a custom browser-based software, the Networked Theatre, used for both hybrid in-person/online audiovisual performances. In this article we describe this work and reflect on our experience as performers and audience feedback, which suggests that our dissective method of live coding, based on examining ‘ready-made’ algorithms, offers a unique experiential entryway into the bodies of machine learning and data corpi

Choreographies of the Circle & Other Geometries

Choreographies of the Circle & Other Geometries, in Critical Coding Cookbook: Intersectional Feminist Approaches to Teaching and Learning. In the context of modern computer programming, the origin tale of code often begins with the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage in 19th century Europe. This beginning, buoyed by the industrial revolution and militarization, fostered an embedded set of values into computation aligned with an ideology of standardization, optimization, and flawlessness. “Good” code is efficient code that operates on a scarcity mindset, limited by hardware and energy resources. And yet, there are histories to math, engineering, and computing that are less prominently recognized because they do not neatly fit into the narratives of capitalist production. Ada Lovelace and her contribution to the development of modern computing has only recently been more broadly recognized. Textile production, which led to the invention of the Jacquard Loom, was a great inspiration to Charles Babbage’s research. Gendered and racialized preconceptions greatly impact what is validated as technical and creative work. We believe that it is time to confront how computational history has been retrofitted to tell a single narrative by recentering marginalized ways of knowing. For example, one may trace back to poe divination to gain a new perspective on the boolean variables. Quipu may be seen as one of the oldest examples of data storage. Fractals, which are often reduced to mathematical formulas in computer science classrooms can be traced back to multiple beginnings throughout ancient history such as traditional African architecture. The Critical Coding Cookbook perceives history as a messy entanglement rather than a linear graph. There is a growing awareness towards reclaiming ancestral knowledge and a movement to decolonize computation. Through centering marginalized bodies and identities, we aim to build a collection of alternative histories, narratives, and approaches to computation. This volume of material can serve as an open-source educational resource across a spectrum of learning communities

A Trans-Disciplinary Tool for Collaborative, Choreographed, and Embodied Audio-Visual Live Coding

Seeking balanced and mutual interaction, the authors designed and implemented tools to connect a live coding system for audio built in Haskell with Javascript tools for live coding browser-based visuals to enable a collaborative audio-visual performance. Each system generates and emits OSC messages through functions developed by the authors and triggered by preexisting functions in those systems. The systems also gained subsystems for receiving incoming messages and modifying system state according to those messages. Means for displaying transmitted data were also implemented, allowing audiences greater insight into performer interactions. The system was designed to enhance the possibility of equal dialogue between the performers and avoid disastrous changes to a partner’s system state. It was developed following an on-going research and recollection of musical and choreographic scores that reference principles of non-linear composition, non-hegemonic time and space constructs, and techno-feminist perspectives

From Individual Discomfort to Collective Solidarity: Choreographic Exploration of Extractivist Technology

We invite human-computer interaction and technology practitioners to join us in the collaborative exploration of discomfort associated with technology in the age of surveillance capitalism. With the help of body-based exercises inspired by choreography we will articulate the discomforts of living and designing with extractivist technology. Our studio is aimed at technology practitioners of a broad range of expertise who have experienced discomfort in relation to data- driven extractivist systems. In the first part of the studio, participants will share their experiences of resisting such systems as users and technology creators. In the second part, participants will engage in an ideation session to propose forms of countering existing technologies. Embodied methods and choreographic approaches will be used for making digital discomfort tangible and for guiding the exploration of the topics at stake. As an outcome, participants will collectively design a toolbox to conceptualise discomfort in a tangible, embodied way, and form a network to continue discuss these matters post-studio in an online community discussion group

Community Report: Livecodera

In March of 2022, LivecoderA, a new live coding community came into being, coalescing around the need to recognize a specific cohort of live coders who identify as women. The group is inherently feminist and intersectional, and its creation was motivated by many desires. Among them: solidarity and visibility, to be counted as sisters, and to reflect to each other the strength of our numbers. A manifesto and several events have since been produced, and the community is active online while also making more in-person connections whenever possible through the coordination of gigs, residencies and meetups. At the time of publishing, the community connects through Telegram and Discord, with channels consisting of 48 and 27 members respectively

Patterns in Deep Time

In this paper, we explore how textile pattern-making can be a useful activity for live coders used to manipulating software. We ran an algorithmic patterns workshop in July 2022 -- with a node at "on the fly" festival in Barcelona, a node in Sheffield and the workshop leader in Penryn -- where we created an activity recreating ancient patterns by weaving on tablet looms that we constructed from card and yarn, and sent to the participants for this remote, multi location workshop. One of the aims of the Algorithmic Pattern project is to highlight the relationship people have had with patterns over history, and how we can use this to uncover certain misconceptions we have about algorithmic patterns in contemporary society. We collected responses from those who participated in the workshop and collated the responses. We found that tablet weaving allows us to connect the physical patterns with their algorithmic descriptions. Also, errors relate with the trade-off among expectations and surprise and exploring new unexpected possibilities. Finally, sharing the experiences among the participants allows us to observe how we interpret patterns when comparing it with other experiences

Patterns in Deep Time

In this paper, we explore how textile pattern-making can be a useful activity for live coders used to manipulating software. We ran an algorithmic patterns workshop in July 2022 — with a node at on_the_fly. collect(_) festival in Barcelona, a node in Sheffield and the workshop leader in Penryn — where we created an activity recreating ancient patterns by weaving on tablet looms that we constructed from card and yarn, and sent to the participants for this remote/multi location workshop. One of the aims of the Algorithmic Pattern project is to highlight the relationship people have had with patterns over history, and how we can use this to uncover certain misconceptions we have about algorithmic patterns in contemporary society. We collected responses from those who participated in the workshop and collated the responses. We found that tablet weaving allows us to connect the physical patterns with their algorithmic descriptions. Also, errors relate with the trade-off among expectations and surprise and exploring new unexpected possibilities. Finally, sharing the experiences among the participants allows us to observe how we interpret patterns when comparing it with other experiences