http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=5967284614450127088&q=ikaruga
I can see everything he is doing and i still go WoW!
p.s. its just easier to relate to manual dexterity because its a universal experience
mental dexterity is harder to spot, especially in arcane late bound scipting form :)
p.s. ignore my shmup fetishisms
Tom
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http://www.thinkinggames.co.uk
http://www.nullpointer.co.uk
----- Original Message -----
From: Kassen
To: livecode_at_slab.org
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 2:38 PM
Subject: Re: [livecode] re: show us your screens
On 9/26/06, Fredrik Olofsson <f_at_fredrikolofsson.com> wrote:
sure, noble goals for livecoding and i wish i could agree. but aren't
we throwing out the baby here?
Could well be! I have no idea. I was writing purely from how I myself look at it with liberal amounts of hunches. It's all quite new and perhaps in five years livecoding will be as established as grooveboxes and it will turn out I was wrong completely.
i mean suppressing the mysticism, the
virtuosity, the ingenious algorithms, the wow-factor, the
how-the-hell-did-(s)he-do-that... aren't they all very important parts
of a good performance?
Oh, I agree. I don't agree with all those factors to the same degree but yes.
Still, in a odd way livecoding reminds me of a thing Liszt (the composer and pianist) did. Liszt was the first one to turn the grand piano so the keyboard was at 90 degrees to the edge of the stage. This resulted in the lid projecting the sound at the audience but more interestingly (to us) it opened up his hands visually. This was quite important because some people considdered his music to be completely unplayable after just seeing the sheet music.
In a way I think showing the schreen is similar to Liszt showing his hands. This may have taken something from the "how did he do that?" factor but I also think it's generally established that Liszt still had one of the largest "wow factors" in musical history.
I think the "how did he do that?" thing has gotten quite damaged by some laptop musicians where the correct answer is "he didn't". Liszt, unlike us, didn't have the option of working with a backing track in secret. What apeals to me in livecoding is the inherent honesty, unlike in many performances of electronic music there is no option to cheat. There may still be a "how did he do that?" element; I know I think "how did he do that?" about code quite often, hopefully I'll go "ah, that's clever!" soon afterwards...
I have a suspicion that for a good livecoding performance you'd need to be a very good coder as well as a very focused sort of person, a quick thinker and so on and that this in itself might be impressive enough, maybe actually more impressive the more clear it is what's going on.
at least i know i prefer to get tricked or
confused instead of 'taught' something.
Sure, to some degree but I think I'd be disapointed with a fake interperter and fake code to mime to a minidisk after the first time I saw it (the first time would admittedly be quite funny).
this is just so much more
imaginative and inspirational than to understand or fully grasp
something.
Maybe, but that holds everywhere. Many regular musical pieces, from Liszt to hair-metal have passages that are so fast and complicated that even if you know the intstrument being played very well you still couldn't fully grasp every note.
i'd rather see livecoders dare, risk and fake to amuse than
preach about code ease-of-use.
Ok, that might be a misunderstanding. I wasn't saying anyone should preach. I agree with most of the points of the open source movement but the discussion is very boring to me, particularly because many of those it's aimed at don't want to be in that discussion at all. Livecoding, or for that matter any sort of creative coding, only makes sense if you enjoy the process. I think it has the added apeal of being open and honest about exactly what's happening to the audience but I'm not at all in favour of beating the poor audience over the head with that concept verbally. If it's not clear on it's own it might not even be preceived as true anyway.
coding stuff from scratch live on stage is such a weird activity. it's
a pisstake on both laptop music and office work. i love it.
Oh, sure, I think so too, I don't think there's any conflict between the two. Still, I believe that it would stil be interesting if it would ever catch on and wouldn't be weird anymore but that's pure specualtion.
I don't think we disagree at all, at least I don't disagree with what you said; as for my other points I completely prepared to be shown wrong; it should be exciting to see how that stuff develops.
Kas.
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Received on Tue Sep 26 2006 - 14:08:33 BST