On Mon, 2008-02-25 at 11:50 +0000, Dave Griffiths wrote:
> I think a livecoding performance _is_ boring if people can't read the
> code, or at least - if it's indistinguishable by the audience from a
> normal laptop performance, it loses most of it's significance (for me).
>>From this I think it follows that normal laptop performance is boring,
which I'd agree with. In that case it's better not to pretend that it's
a performance and instead (for example) stand behind the 'audience', and
let them instead look at each other, hopefully dancing and smiling at
each other, rather than the music maker frowning and tutting at syntax
errors.
> It's even worse if the code is hard to read - obviously in cases like this
> it is often due to circumstances, but it can give audiences a bad
> impression. I feel that only making it vaguely readable can been seen as
> saying "there is no point, as you lesser people wouldn't understand it
> anyway". I think it's a very quick way of making people much less
> interested in what you are doing.
I think this really depends. If you don't think about things and end up
with a tiny font on a crappy projection then that is frustrating. If
you obscure your code in an interesting way, such as by superimposing
multiple performers' screens, then that is funny. To me this is the
best of both worlds -- the musician's movements are visible, but the
audience doesn't feel like they're expected to read or understand any of
the symbolic representations of whatever musical model the musician is
using. So hopefully they will feel that something interesting is going
on, and be motivated to listen for it in the music.
> So just restating what I always say I suppose, but making things clear is
> key to increasing interest in livecoding imho.
But I think you have been in favour of superimposing screens in the
past?
alex
Received on Mon Feb 25 2008 - 14:44:12 GMT