Re: [livecode] early live coding

From: Julian Rohrhuber <rohrhuber_at_uni-hamburg.de>
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 22:01:08 +0100

>I knew this piece but I can't say I ever thought of it as live
>coding: the rules of chess don't change during performance? The
>mappings aren't modified once running? could you elaborate why you
>think it is a precursor?

It might depend on the mapping model of the sonification. Chess is a
language (I would suspect that it is not turing-complete though).
Each momentary state in the chess game describes an algorithm of what
to do next (for example you could sonify what a chess computer does
when iterating over a reasonably large number of possible moves). The
similarity could be imagined as that of a force field of possible
futures implied by a grammar that causes double-meaning. Sound is
caused by this double-readablity.

In this piece I think the sonification is simple, just whether a
certain field is 'stood on', or not, matters. Maybe we should give
that a proper term, being maybe one possible trajectory extreme of
live coding. Side-effect-Art? Symbolic Involuntarism? Language-Gaming?


>(enjoyed the wiki article on Duchamp though, good to see an artist
>with a sense of humour who abandons art for chess considering chess
>the greater pursuit!)

btw. by art historians this is considered a joke. Duchamp continued
with his 'great glass' and other works without mentioning it.

>I heard a rumour that there is a John Zorn improv setting that
>involves musicians re-writing rules during play, but do not know
>which one it might be or if it could qualify...

definitely a candidate for 'changing grammars'.



>--On 16 December 2005 01:41:20 +0100 Julian Rohrhuber
><rohrhuber_at_uni-hamburg.de> wrote:
>
>> I think I've found an instance of what we might want to call live audio
>> programming that was performed around 1968. Marcel Duchamp and John Cage,
>> having been old chess fellas, of course had to do it: Chess-Sonification.
>> In their concert at Ryerson Polytechnic in Toronto called "Reunion", they
>> used photoelectric cells to trigger sounds while playing chess.
>>
>>
>> there is a link to Leonardo Journal of Music vol. 9. (Lowell Cross,
>> 'Reunion : John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Electronic Music and Chess)
>>
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp
>> http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/bib_duchamp/music_duchamp.html
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> .

-- 
.
Received on Fri Dec 16 2005 - 21:04:42 GMT

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