Ge:
> >What is our stance on combining non-livecode
> >software with state-approved systems during performance?
Interesting question!
> Maybe we should put out a licence (lcl) that disallows linking to any
> non live coding system..
Heh, I agree. It's easy, and perhaps useful to make idealistic
statements like "If software isn't written live, or interacted with,
then it is not a performance." While I these statements are useful for
discussion and self-reflection, I don't think they should bind anyone.
> I don't see much point in trying to keep performace as pure as
> possible. The question is more what the intentions of presenting the
> text on stage are. [...] The main thing in my view is a certain
> perspective on language that programming can change when it is done
> interactively.
For me presenting the text is allowing the listener to see some of the
movement that makes the music. If they can see the text being typed and
chopped around then they can hopefully feel able to open themselves to
the music as something that is alive in some sense.
Last night I heard someone play music from an ipod that they said they
made using astrophysics. Normally I wouldn't take it seriously but in
this case I trusted the musician, because I knew him. I didn't make the
connection between the music and the twin pulsar systems that he was
sampling from using a radio telescope, but I was able to take it on
trust and listen to the music as very nice, carefully made music.
However in general I can't trust blank face behind a hidden laptop
screen.
To be honest I am sceptical about whether reading and understanding the
code that a livecoder is making could really enhance the musical
experience. The interactions between musical processes are more
interesting than the musical processes themselves (the whole being
greater than the sum) but you can only read one thing at a time [1]. So
perhaps it's better not to read one subroutine at a time, and to instead
listen to all of them at once.
Anyway, this all somehow becomes irrelevant if people are dancing, the
focus then hopefully being away from the performer.
Excuse me if I am coming across a bit vague, I'm coming off a general
anaesthetic!
alex
[1] From "The raft" by Jose Saramago (in translation):
"Writing is extremely difficult, it is an enormous responsibility, you
need only think of the exhausting work involved in setting out events in
chronological order, first this one, then that, or, if considered more
convenient to achieve the right effect, today's event placed before
yesterday's episode, and other no less risky acrobatics, the past
treated as if it were new, the present as a continuous process without
any present or ending, but, however hard writers might try, there is one
feat they cannot achieve, that is to put into writing, in the same
tense, two events which have occurred simultaneously. Some believe the
difficulty can be solved by dividing the page into two columns, side by
side, but this strategy is ingenuous, because the one was written first
and the other afterwards, without forgetting that the reader will have
to read this one first and then the other one, or vice versa, the people
who come off best are the opera singers, each with his or her own part
to sing, three, four, five, six between tenors, basses, sopranos and
baritones, all singing different words, for example, the cynic mocking,
the ingenue pleading, the gallant lover slow in coming to her aid, what
interests the opera-goer is the music, but the reader is not like this,
he wants everything explained, syllable by syllable and one after the
other, as they are shown here."
Perhaps this doesn't apply to a computer, which can have or emulate
multiple processes. But does it apply to a human reading code or not?
Received on Thu Oct 21 2004 - 21:53:13 BST