I think it's a great idea. I would buy it!
There was a very inspiring book a few years back
by Friends of Ed called 4x4 Generative Design.
Many a student wore the binding down on that one
until it was just leaflets. You probably all know
of it as Adrian Ward was one of the authors, but
it was a sort of specialist book, probably not
very known outside of this list and their ilk. In
a similar vein, a couple different artists showed
their methods, each in his own chapter, then did
a mashup at the end of the book.
I probably wouldn't participate unless you wanted
a lame chapter on livecoding in Director (yawn),
but I couldn't think of a better group than this
one to come together and whip up something great.
If I wasn't reading this forum, I would be
writing about Livecoding right now for my thesis
(to be finished about the end of the year, or so
I claim), and there is already an editor
interrested in turning it into a book. But that
won't be started until next year, a bit late
probably. And that'll be just a chapter or two,
at best, and very theoretical, whereas what you
propose sounds far more hands-on, so far cooler.
And anyway I've got my own thing going and many
people even here probably won't agree with my
take on all this stuff.
As to the wiki/book conundrum, books are great
things. They are sort of historical stamps, and
have their own life parallel to - and not in
competition with - things like wikis. Also, wikis
have a hard time converging things tightly the
way books do. It's a limited space (only so many
pages) so people tend to make it matter. It also
requires an introduction - which wikis do very
poorly - giving people a quick access to the
essentials (try before you buy), which is
currently missing in the livecoding scene. And
obviously, any book on livecoding would have some
sort of wiki-thing associated with it.
My $0.05
Concerning Nick's comments:
>(Not sure live coding is sufficiently
>established to allow for a book yet, but then,
>perhaps the establishment is an outcome of
>creating a book! )
I think this is precisely the point. Usually
collective art books have a sort of manifesto
tinge to them, a sort of way of declaring that
something exists while contextualizing it. Also
it might be good to put something down before it
becomes something ugly, like what's happened to
VJ'ing. Usually if artists themselves don't do
it, no one will. Curators and art critics still
suck.
>Alternative possibilties might be a conference
>(with proceedings) on live coding. Or to
>actually hold the World Live Coding
>Championships.
I tried to get the ISEA/ZeroOne people into it
last summer, but they sort of yawned. I don't
think they fully got it. The Wired article might
have helped finding an audience...
>I did investigate with one academic journal
>about a special issue on live coding, though
>they could only guarantee space at the earliest
>in 2009. And the more widely distributed press
>articles are a better promotion if that is the
>main aim of writing.
>I was wondering if anyone's thought of writing a book about livecoding.
>Either way, is it a good idea? My initial thought was that we could put
>together a proposal to o'reilly as an excercise, and if they don't
>accept it go ahead anyway, perhaps as a wikibook.
>
>I don't know if it would really fit into o'reilly's series but I'm
>thinking an introductory chapter about each of the main systems, a
>chapter on the theory of interactive programming, a chapter about the
>technicalities of doing so in a range of languages, a bit about cutting
>edge livecoding techniques - use of history, the blurring between code
>and GUI and so on... So instructive but still with plenty room for
>humour.
>
>On one hand a publisher like O'Reilly won't like a proposal with more
>than a few authors, and on the other a wikibook should have as many as
>possible... So we see who's interested I guess.
>
>On the other hand maybe this is a bad/old fashioned idea and we should
>just stick with the wikis we already have. I just think it might be
>something fun to work towards.
>
>alex
--
/*
// Douglas Edric Stanley
<douglas_at_abstractmachine.net>
// Artiste
http://www.abstractmachine.net
// Professeur d'Arts numeriques, L'école supérieure d'art d'Aix-en-provence
http://www.ecole-art-aix.fr/
// Chercheur, Laboratoire Esthétique de l'interactivité, Université de Paris 8
http://www.ciren.org
*/
Received on Sun Aug 27 2006 - 20:51:46 BST