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.
Received on Tue Sep 26 2006 - 13:38:33 BST