Alan makes great points, and I really like the piano key analogy.
Livecoding has always seemed to me about allowing the audience to
appreciate the performance as they would a traditional instrument.
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. So the coding starts to feel like a
separate performance from the sound, and it's almost like one part of the
brain has to read the text while the other listens to the music. (I wonder
if the fact that it's language may relate to this cognitively, as it could
be that the brain has to actively process livecoding differently than
watching a violinist.)
Another difference may be the relationship to the body. People are used to
watching performances of the body, whereas with livecoding the focus is on
the code. The code is of course a manifestation of mental processes, but I
think humans aren't as good at watching those. (Performances of brain wave
music have also been awkward for audiences.)
That doesn't mean people shouldn't show their screens. But I think it's
useful to consider that livecoding performance actually is substantially
different than traditional instrumental performance and to think about ways
to work with that.
And of course it's heartwarming to recall that livecoders are by no stretch
the first composer/performers to confuse audiences. Today's
blast-from-the-past:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9vvrSyAPuw
-Amy
On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 12:00 AM, Alan Blackwell <afb21_at_cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> I think we also need to question the "dancefloor" assumption. Although I
> like a club as much as the next computer science professor, and appreciate
> the response from kids (and their parents) when I use the word "algorave",
> in the 10 years I've been attending live coded performances I have mostly
> been sitting in comfy chairs of a university concert hall rather than
> raving.
>
> Most of the music I hear in those concert halls is from orchestras,
> choirs, chamber groups and instrumental soloists - with the occasional jazz
> band or electroacoustic piece. As a listener with broad tastes, I love it
> all, and appreciate the chance to be in the same space with virtuoso
> performers.
>
> So this is what frames my appreciation of live coding - I see a code
> virtuoso who knows her instrument, I enjoy the sound, and I admire the
> skill with which it is produced. Any suggestion that the code is
> "distracting" from the performance is nonsense. It's like saying that we
> should turn the piano keyboard away from the audience because it's just
> distracting having all those black and white things flashing up and down
> when you don't understand what they do.
>
> I've been an orchestral performer for many years, and the tacit
> understanding of performance practice is pretty universal. These
> instruments are complicated and hard to play. We're aware that the audience
> doesn't understand everything they see, but showing them how it is done is
> an essential part of the communicative and participatory context. It's rare
> for anyone in an audience to say "why don't you just put a CD on?", which
> seems to be the general attitude underlying the informal comment that
> kicked off this topic.
>
> I'm sure others have interpreted the "show us your code" admonition in a
> far more sophisticated way than this, but to me it just seems like common
> sense. Am I missing something?
>
> Alan
>
> > On 14 Dec 2014, at 22:47, Amy Alexander <amy_at_plagiarist.org> wrote:
> >
> > Jeffrey Brown wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > "Few of the people on a dancefloor want to be reading text; they want a
> > mood, a beat, and colors and flashing lights that speak the same message
> as
> > the music. Ideally, I think, the same network of data and instructions
> > that generates audio would generate visuals, so that changes in one
> domain
> > would map naturally to the other."
> >
> > Yeah, the sticky debate on the desirability of audiovisual mapping has
> been
> > going on since at least the 1940s, when experimental animators often
> > animated to sound - either voluntarily or reluctantly because of
> contract.
> > Live visualists and audiovisualists have been both doing and avoiding
> > automated sound/image correlations since there were automated
> > correlations. There's quite a bit of research been done on the history
> of
> > audiovisual correlations (going back to 1800's panoramas, etc.) And some
> > musical and visual instruments and performance have been designed
> > specifically to address the digital performer/performance disconnect in
> > meaningful ways - which is of course also what livecoding is about.
> >
> > The interesting thing about livecoding is it addresses it from the POV of
> > mind->performance rather than body->performance. I have always felt the
> > latter has an ableist bias, even as I've advocated the approach. So
> > highlighting mind->performance would seem to have potential in that
> regard.
> >
> > Anyway, some links to 1930's automated audiovisual systems (non
> realtime).
> > Len Lye's Colour Box: (The optical sound track was pre-laid on the film,
> > and he scratched the emulsion to animate in synchronization):
> > https://vimeo.com/71860799
> >
> > Oskar Fischinger's Ornament Sound Experiments:
> > "Odd Designs on Film Turn Sound to Music."
> >
> >
> https://books.google.com/books?id=oygDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA36&lpg=PA36&dq=odd+designs+on+film+turn+to+music+popular+science&source=bl&ots=Z34Gzw0wcN&sig=PGqdpfjszlZH5nXs8y7LqkwlQPc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Pw-OVKmlOtPsoASxt4D4Bw&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false
> >
> > (A historical synopsis http://www.see-this-sound.at/works/296/asset/51 )
> >
> > And here's some real-time analog video synthesis from the 70's generated
> > using audio synthesizers as input (you could take CV out of the analog
> > synths and input to your video synth):
> >
> > https://vimeo.com/7517418
> > (source material by woody vasulka)
> >
> > http://www.vdb.org/titles/illuminatin-sweeney
> > (skip sweeney)
> >
> >
> > Happy happy,
> > -Amy
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 6:58 PM, Charlie Roberts <bigbadotis_at_gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> Few of the people on a dancefloor want to be reading text; they want a
> >>> mood, a beat, and colors and flashing lights that speak the same
> message
> >> as
> >>> the music
> >>
> >>
> >> I've been doing some experiments with flashing lights, and also
> borrowing
> >> from Thor's ixi lang work to reveal changes to state using the source
> code.
> >>
> >> https://vimeo.com/114404376
> >>
> >> Sorry if this is trite, but I think a lot depends on the audience and
> the
> >> performer in any particular performance. If the audience is at an
> Algorave,
> >> for example, it's probable that people on the floor want to be reading
> text
> >> at least some of the time. And that's great! We should show it to them.
> On
> >> the flip side, are there performers on the list who regularly live code
> at
> >> "normal" dance events, where the audience has no idea that live coding
> is
> >> even taking place? I think it's an interesting goal to pull off such a
> >> performance (using live coding to keep people dancing who potentially
> don't
> >> care about means of production), but only one of many interesting goals.
> >>
> >> - Charlie
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 4:33 PM, Gavin Starks <gavin_at_dgen.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hi all
> >>>
> >>> I love this discussion.
> >>>
> >>> To expand a bit on what I wrote in the FB post, with some extra
> emphasis:
> >>>
> >>> For me, seeing the code creates *the* essential *causal* visual
> reference
> >>> that
> >>> was missing from human-computer-based *performances*.
> >>>
> >>> We don't need to watch a saxophone player play to embrace their
> >>> performance, but to know that we can if we want to seems fundamental to
> >> the
> >>> live, and personal, nature of it. We can watch them breathe.
> >>>
> >>> It was a continuous frustration of mine that "laptop with a person
> >> sitting
> >>> at it"-based music was effectively the same audience-experience as
> >>> tape-based or computer-rendered music: the causal link was broken, yet
> in
> >>> this case the ghostly faces of the performer indicated that "something
> >>> might be happening" to which I was excluded (like the violinist playing
> >>> behind a curtain). Tape-based music has its own aesthetic and context,
> >> but
> >>> this half-way house felt almost literally like a "ghost performance".
> I'd
> >>> sooner the "performer" sat in the audience.
> >>>
> >>> Equally, when people have added a physical control element, it can
> often
> >>> seem forced or trite, and overly dissonant with the sounds involved -
> >>> instrument development is hard.
> >>>
> >>> The development of an editable visual language for use in live
> >> performance
> >>> is a remarkable thing in itself. Projecting it, to me, recreates the
> >> magic
> >>> of performance in computer-music: the causal link is re-established -
> it
> >>> doesn't matter if the audience has no idea what the causality is, but
> it
> >>> does matter that they can see it exists. It rematerialises the
> >> disembodied.
> >>>
> >>> From that point other emotive, visual and sonic bonds can be formed.
> And
> >>> then the ability to for me to link what I am hearing directly with the
> >>> actual code feels *authentic *to the origins of not only the sounds,
> but
> >>> how they are being played (I can see the typing, its speed,
> hesitations,
> >>> lots of performative cues). It seems to me that these ideas of
> >>> authenticity, causality and re-materialisation in computer-based
> >>> performance are really fascinating areas to explore.
> >>>
> >>> Best
> >>> Gavin
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>>
> >>> Read the whole topic here: livecode:
> >>> http://lurk.org/r/topic/5dVXhIWtQFk6wSrEeGi3O4
> >>>
> >>> 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/4IxdKUFwwpCGZ52Sk3SkyO
> >>
> >> 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/dZXGl42yH66abz1o8jQYD
> >
> > To leave livecode, email livecode_at_group.lurk.org with the following
> email subject: unsubscribe
>
> --
> Alan Blackwell
> Reader in Interdisciplinary Design, University of Cambridge
> Further details from www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Read the whole topic here: livecode:
> http://lurk.org/r/topic/14U4b4oUiA8Xu30CYLaHRG
>
> To leave livecode, email livecode_at_group.lurk.org with the following email
> subject: unsubscribe
>
--
Read the whole topic here: livecode:
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Received on Tue Dec 16 2014 - 06:03:59 GMT