Hi Scott,
Yes! I like to watch the performative activity too. But I think this is not
universal for everybody, as it's a new thing for people. As with John
Cage's performance for the 1960 TV studio audience (and some contemporary
YouTube viewers), many people aren't sure what to make of livecoding yet.
I'm guessing it's easier for algoliterate or at least algofriendly
audiences to appreciate livecoding performance than it is for people who
are put off by code and algorithms. Although a lot of people are
algofriendly these days, I get the sense it's still a leap for them to deal
with algorithms in the performative context. It's just much different than
what they're exposed to in the context of music (or visuals, etc.) Sort of
like the people trying to grok Cage's blender and bathtub as music - they
understood blenders and bathtubs, and that blenders and bathtubs make
sounds, but the idea that everyday sound could be music was still a leap
for them.
I don't expect livecoding to follow the same trajectory toward acceptance
as Cage's work, as there's a lot different culturally. It's possible that
once everyone is algoliterate the idea of livecoding will seem so banal
we'll have to project nanophysics instead...
-Amy
The algofriendly get that it's performative, where as the algounfriendly
just see it as typing code.
On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 3:26 AM, Scott Wilson <s.d.wilson_at_bham.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> Hi Amy,
>
> On 16 Dec 2014, at 06:03, Amy Alexander <amy_at_plagiarist.org> wrote:
>
> > I think what confuses audience members is the part about understanding
> the
> > performance. Someone may not know how to play the violin, but there's a
> > direct visual -> auditory connection between bowing & fingering and the
> > sound that's produced. Wind instruments are arguably more complicated to
> > understand because it's harder to correlate fingering to pitch - but
> people
> > generally don't care because the direct correlation is still there. With
> > livecoding the correlation is a little more complicated - the text
> doesn't
> > usually change in sync with the sound.
>
> I usually think of it slightly more generally: Things like playing the
> piano, violin, electric guitar, or even the contrabassoon have in common
> with live coding that there are aspects of those activities which remain
> largely opaque to audiences. Classic cartoons in which a conductor changing
> her or his gestures results in different pieces of music show how shallow
> the actual understanding can be for many audience members. The difference,
> however, is that those are what we might call received sorts of
> performance, and are considered self-evidentally performative.
>
> When I first saw projected live coding, what very much surprised me was
> how much of a performative activity it seemed to be, in contrast to so much
> laptop performance. The fact that it was in a language that I didnt know,
> and therefore couldnt entirely understand, was not a particularly important
> factor. What was important was that it *was* obviously performative, and
> even dramatic. That it could become a received form of performance seemed
> clear!
>
> One contrast with much music was the obvious aspect of more extended
> preparation for events, but that made it more performative to me, not less.
> There is an arc of expectation as a live coder gets ready for her next
> execution! So showing code was not about facilitating understanding from
> my perspective that didnt matter so much but more about making it more
> self-evidently a performance.
>
> S.
> --
>
> Read the whole topic here: livecode:
> http://lurk.org/r/topic/1HDTrGqI8Zk67qXLcfbP5K
>
> To leave livecode, email livecode_at_group.lurk.org with the following email
> subject: unsubscribe
>
--
Read the whole topic here: livecode:
http://lurk.org/r/topic/4l1ZwmDnTTrATWhOJRasiB
To leave livecode, email livecode_at_group.lurk.org with the following email subject: unsubscribe
Received on Tue Dec 16 2014 - 17:02:36 GMT