THURSDAY CLUB :: Alex McLean & Dave Griffiths - Live Coding :: June 5, 2008; 6-8 pm :: Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross :: FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME.

Live coders program in conversation with their machine, dynamically adding instructions and functions to running programs. Here there is no distinction between creating and running a piece of software - its execution is controlled through edits to its source code. Live coding has recently become popular in performance, where software is written before an audience in order to generate music and video for them to enjoy. Continue reading

The Mapping Festival is getting actively prepared! It will take place in Geneva (CH) from April 10 - 20. The Mapping Festival has been promoting VJing and live video mixing for 4 years. As a digital creation laboratory, the festival has won an international reference status in the world of audiovisual arts.

During the 10 days of the festival, you will be able to see multimedia installations, AV performances, lectures, workshops, concerts and clubbing nights, between the Centre of Contemporary Art, the Spoutnik cinema, l’Etage, and the Zoo/Usine.

Ez3kiel (Jarring Effect – F) Live :: Shy Fx (Digital Soundboy - UK) DJ Set :: Samim feat Miguel Toro (Get Physical – CH/DE) Live :: The Bloody Beetroots (Mental Groove - IT) DJ Set Continue reading

“If relational aesthetics and open source were always commercial, can the musical score provide a way of thinking through different relationships between creativity and code? The return to improvisation in ‘livecoding’ draws parallels with experimental practices developed by maverick musicians, programmers and educators from Sun Ra, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Scratch Orchestra to Seymour Papert. Simon Yuill argues that these ‘distributive practices’ are worth extending today.

In recent years the foregrounding of ‘collaboration’ in artistic practice has acquired an aura of inherent benevolence and emancipation, as though the very act of working with others in itself ensures some form of resistance or alternative to conventions of cultural production, and confers positive moral value. Continue reading

Spatial Z by John Bowers, Ann Rosén and Sten-Olof Hellström :: February 17, 2008 2:00 pm :: Fylkingen, Torkel Knutssonsgatan 2, Münchenbryggeriet, Stockholm, Sweden :: Part of the Stockholm Music Festival.

Spatial Z is a collaborative composition, jointly written and performed by experimental instrument maker John Bowers, sound artist Ann Rosén and composer Sten-Olof Hellström. The piece explores the spatiality of sound and problematises music as a physical and perceptual phenomenon. What is the connection between music and space? Between instruments and the environments they find themselves in? Between the spaces in which performers interact with their instruments and each other and the audience’s listening space? How wide and high is an abstract sound? What is the relationship between the concert (architectural) space and the (imaginary) spaces suggested in the music itself? Continue reading

VJ THEORY AND PRACTICE WORKSHOP - with Ana Carvalho :: When: January 22, 2008; 6:30 - 10:30 pm :: Harvestworks, 596 Broadway, Suite 602 (at Houston St), New York, NY :: Limit: 15 Students :: Cost: $50.

Through her work Ana Carvalho explores ideas of identity, both theoretically and in her practice: she performs under the name Magenta Interior. Ana is one of the two editors of the project VJ Theory which compiles theoretical works about VJing and realtime performance and is interested in exploring ways for people to develop Artist Theory, theory based in practice, individually and collectively. Continue reading

“Andrew Sorensen is an Australian musician and programmer, author of the Impromptu live coding environment as well as a live coding musician of note. I recently caught up with his latest work, documented as screencasts on his site. In A Study in Keith Sorensen builds a Keith Jarrett machine that juxtaposes two linked layers of performance - qwerty and (phantom) piano keyboard. Stained (left) is a striking twist on the “transparent” aesthetics of live coding, as Sorensen uses Impromptu to draw in, and manipulate, the code window, hooking the graphics into the musical algorithms. Continue reading

SYMPOSIUM 4: Audio Extranautes: Flux, Distance, Sociability :: December 17-18, 2007 :: ENSA Villa Arson, Nice :: Ping the Vatican workshop :: December 19-21. Details concerning registration here.

The principal objective is to investigate questions concerning the local, social and collective aspects of interaction between physical and digital space (Internet, telephone etc), expressed through experimentation in current digital audio practices. Audio Extranautes, new perspectives on acoustic space via electronic networks, opens several axes of research developed jointly by the two laboratories: Continue reading

TOPLAP (Temporary | Transnational | Terrestrial | Transdimensional) Organisation for the (Promotion | Proliferation | Permanence | Purity) of Live (Algorithm | Audio | Art | Artistic) Programming - TOPLAP exists to promote the writing and modifying of rules while they are followed. This includes the writing of software while it is being executed, allowing programmers to improvise music and visuals live before an audience as well as conduct exploratory research with live source code. Continue reading

Test_Lab: Live_Coding - Code as an interface for improvisation and networked performances :: Featuring: Powerbooks_Unplugged (D/NL), Florian Cramer (Piet Zwart Institute, D/NL), Carla Mulder (Lange Poten Theatre Group, NL), Susie Jae (aka. Jean Van Sloan, US/NL), and V2_Lab :: December 13, 2007; 8:00 pm :: V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media, Eendrachtsstraat 10, 3012XL, Rotterdam :: This event will be streamed live.

A relatively new programming paradigm called Live Coding is redefining the way in which software can be applied in live performances. While improvisation has a long history in the arts, the traditional edit compile run programming model limits software use to predetermined procedures running alongside a performance; Continue reading

Al-jazari, by Dave Griffiths, presents a novel approach to live coded music. Using his bespoke game engine, Fluxus (which is written in Scheme) Griffiths uses the isometric tile based game model, populated with robots as a live Generative ’score’. Continue reading