Andrew Sorensen
> I'd be interested to hear what others think about screencasts of live
> coding performances - or recordings of other kinds. Is this valid
> and useful or does it detract from the temporal nature of the
> practice. I'll start the discussion by stating that I'm really
> unsure myself, which I guess is pretty unsurprising given that I'm
> asking the question. The one thing I'm certainly not suggesting is
> that these recordings be performed in any sense (i.e. I'm definitely
> not advocating recordings being played in concerts).
I love them. I tend to watch most things posted. I have to say though; I
mainly watch them for pure entertainment. It's hard to get something larger
out of most videos because the text is nearly always unreadable.
Dave's Betablocker and al-jazari are positive exceptions in that regard in
that the programing instructions are visually larger and more clear so those
are the ones that I liked best as videos about livecoding so far.
I'd like to see attempts to get around that. It's already hard enough to
read off projected schreens if the font isn't very large but video
compression kills all hope of that. Maybe use could be made of split-schreen
(with one being a close-up or direct feed, the other featuring the
performer) or perhaps even some tactfull use of sub-title files?
The more the video shows of the actual coding the more it should become
clear wether we are dealing with a improvised snapshot of one moment in a
composer/coder's development or a carefully prepared performance that was
practiced many times in that exact form. Ideally I think a video should/
will be self-documenting in those aspects.
Yours,
Kas.
Received on Fri Apr 06 2007 - 12:08:16 BST