GenericSubmission

Note to jury: If you do not like this application, please edit to your tastes.

Recommended accompaniment: Please listen to Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance (or any other locally pertinent heart swelling jingoism) whilst reading this application gumpf.

Some computer languages allow a programmer to change a running process on the fly by rewriting the code that defines it. If the output of that code is a process being revealed to human senses, an interactive performance is possible. Applied to live computer music this means sound compositions can be heard as they form, and musical algorithms adjusted while already playing.

TOPLAP is the Temporary Organisation for the Promotion of Live Algorithm Programming, set up to explore the application of live programming to composition and performance. TOPLAP advocates treating algorithms as live artistic material, allowing them to be written and manipulated while they create music or video, perhaps in front of an audience.

The interests of the TOPLAP membership encompass live coding performances with output in both audio and visual modalities, the possibilities of immediate feedback given by prototyping compositions in interpreted programming languages and new languages for on-the-fly programming. This international organisation is gathering membership and profile. Recent performances and demonstrations have taken place in Japan, USA, Sweden, Germany, England and Denmark.

Further information on TOPLAP artists, events and theory is available at:

http://www.toplap.org

The site contains links to archived performances, papers on live coding practise and history as identified by the group.

For any possible award TOPLAP submits itself. In particular, we would like to highlight the LÜBECK04 Manifesto for Live Coding Performance, as linked:

• ManifestoDraft

For instance, criticism of laptop performers is rampant (by an old guard?) but it is quite possible to fight such rejection on a better surface: projection of laptop screens to reveal the whole instrument. For audio especially, it is vital that we confront the issue of a level playing field between laptop musicians and conventional acoustic instrumentalists with such full disclosure. Even whilst the immediacy of gesture is still open to debate, the game is at least honest and education of audiences paramount. (Those who worry about trivialisation of such pedagogy are ignoring the possibility of closing your eyes whilst listening to music...). The information can be discrete, not overbearing: but definitely available.

The organisation has identified many avenues of exploration for text based interaction which we are seeking to address. Novel engagement with adaptable level control of as great a flexibility as code affords is a possibility too rich to ignore.

For any performance component of a submission TOPLAP proposes a session of performances from live coders, with both audio and visual outputs. The audience will see and hear the created musical and visual material, and also the projected screens of the participants so that the processes are entirely open and the craft apparent. The coded improvisations show a novel blend of intellectual and emotional content that challenges existing notions of both traditional haptic instrumental and DJ like laptop performance.

Attendance of particular TOPLAP members would be negotiated, but the organisation is happy to also talk about its work in an appropriate forum.

Particular TOPLAP artists are linked from the site, which the judges are encouraged to explore to see the breadth of activity and enthusiasm in this new field.