For me this gets to the crux of the matter (short quote from article)
"It is unrealistic to expect a completely uninformed audience to
remain attentive for 30 minutes of live coding"
The massive caveat here for me would be - if the only thing of
interest is the code itself. In other words if the music/visuals are
not compelling enough to stand alone then people with no interest in
the code are obviously going to lose interest. In fact I would
strongly argue that even the people who do understand the code will
quickly lose interest.
Of course in live coding the process matters, why else would we all
bother to do it. I would assume that on this list one wouldn't need
to say so. I think Alex may have been saying the same thing I'm about
to.
> Ade, Dave and I met in a pub and livecoded together earlier this week.
> There wasn't an audience, but we were still livecoding.
Live coding doesn't have to be primarily about displaying the code, it
is also a way of making sound/visuals, a new style of performance
practice - with or without projecting code to an audience. For me
displaying the code is as much a credentials issue as a communications
issue. It's about letting the audience know that something is being
created just for them - in the moment. It can also be about making
the code an explicit part of the work - visually as well as
communicatively. For those that do understand the code fantastic - we
all love to discuss our work with colleagues but to engage in a
performance practice that does not allow for engagement with non-
experts seems misguided. It's also worth pointing out that there are
two kinds of colleagues for our work that do not necessarily overlap -
musicians and programmers. Maybe we tend to forget that musicians/
visual artists/designers need to be engaged as well as programmers.
I'm certainly guilty of this!! This is what I was trying to get at
earlier - if live coding is only about engaging with programmers then
maybe using music/visuals is just a cheap trick?
I should clarify that I don't think there is a correct answer here.
Obviously there are many valid ways to livecode, but I do think it's
important to think about who the intended audience is (and who it
isn't) and why.
AS
On 23/02/2008, at 1:32 AM, LowNorth wrote:
> Hi Kas and Andrew
>
> You both bring up some very interesting points.
>
> quoting Kas:
> "I talked about this because of Marcel's competitions which have
> rules about loading files (so everything has to be written on the
> spot, (which I like as a perspective) but those rules don't take
> into account that different systems consider different things to be
> a part of the language itself nor for open-source systems being
> changeable themselves, making the whole rule moot, in a way."
>
> and quoting Andrew:
> "Yes, exactly, but it is important not to let the process become
> more important than the result. Don't think I'm arguing for perfect
> performances here, I certainly don't mean to suggest that, but if
> you are going to have a programming competition then make it about
> programming. "
>
> In the competitions that I organize I try to divert attention away
> from these aspects. My primary focus is to bring live coding to a
> lay-audience. The competitive element is there to create excitement,
> and the rules that I've formulated are not intended to highlight
> programming skills but thinking skills. I want an audience who
> understands nothing at all about coding to at least understand that
> what is being projected is a manifestation of a thought process. The
> idea is that the performer who demonstrates superior thinking would
> "win". The audience votes for the winner based on applause. And I
> would prefer that the audience voted on the basis of what they
> experienced as a performance rather than asking them to base their
> choice on something they don't understand (C, SC, CK or whatever). A
> competition which would be about programming would require an expert
> jury to decide the winner, and I am targeting a decidedly non-expert
> audience as the jury.
>
> I would like very much if we could go into the discussion further,
> but I think it would be useful if the interested parties would read
> my article and respond to what's written there:
> http://kmt.hku.nl/~marcel/LiveCodingArticleDRAFT/
>
> (because it's still a draft I wasn't planning to make it broadly
> public yet, but what the heck...)
>
> looking forward to debate...
>
> Marcel
>
Received on Sat Feb 23 2008 - 00:35:14 GMT