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. McLean and Griffiths have played around Europe together with Adrian Ward as the live coding band “slub“. They will talk about the history and practice of live coding, and give some demos of their own live coding environments.

ALEX MCLEAN has been triggering distorted kick drum samples with Perl scripts for far too long. He is a PhD student at Goldsmiths Digital Studios.

DAVE GRIFFITHS writes programs to make noises, pictures and animations. He makes film effects software and computer games.

Dave & Alex are both members of the Openlab free software artists collective and the TOPLAP organisation for live algorithm promotion.

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
Chicks on Speed (Chicks on Speed Records – DE) – Installation
Meneo (Ninjatune / FluidOunce - ES) Live AV
Boombaker (DE) Live AV
Delacrew (ES) Live AV
Giraffentoast (DE) Live AV
Suguru Goto (IRCAM – F) Performance AV
8GB (Kiken.Corporation – ARG) Live AV
Gregory Shakar (USA) - Installation
V-atak (Vidioatak – F/BE) Performance & Live AV
Franz Treichler et Michel Favre (PIAS - CH) Performance AV
Kid Chocolat et Pascal Greco (Poor Records – CH) Performance AV
Collectif FACT (CH) – Installation
Dimitri Delcourt et Nicolas Field (CH) – Installation

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. The recent valorisation of collaboration within the arts, however, merely elides the basic condition of collaboration that all forms of production ultimately rely on in various degrees and arrangements. This can be seen as one part of the larger growth in service and communications industries whose ‘labour’ and ‘produce’ are primarily invested in the structuring and intensification of various collaborative exchanges, often minute and ephemeral, yet, when harvested on a vast scale, capable of generating seemingly endless amounts of surplus value.[1] Collaboration in the production of this ’surplus’ now extends beyond the contracted employees into the consumers themselves, who help define and create the products they themselves consume. This is exemplified in the proliferation of highly ‘personalised’ products and services, reality entertainment, and the social networks of Web 2.0, with the virtual world of Second Life notably combining all three factors.[2] Those artforms which most consciously valorise collaboration, as described in Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics, merely echo this situation.[3] The social relations constructed by the artist in gestures of collaboration with audiences and others become spectacularised and commodified in forms that often do not return to those who created them but rather become tokens within the circulation of the art market.[4] In a funding system that prioritises social inclusion within the arts, like that of the UK, collaborative projects can tick the box that unlocks the piggy-bank of state patronage. In such contexts collaboration quickly becomes little more than a revenue stream.[5] Similarly, the rise of Relational Aesthetics accompanied the embrace of artistic practice by the commercial sector, often drawing upon the strategies of such art to enhance collaboration and ‘creativity’ within the workplace.[6]…” Continue reading All Problems of Notation Will be Solved by the Masses by Simon Yuill, Mute Magazine.

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?

Spatial Z is a composition both in time and space. Sound from the performers will be disseminated through a variety of spaces both real and virtual at varying levels of scale from miniature to the largest imaginable. The concert hall itself becomes a feedback instrument which the audience can engage with by moving around throughout the duration of the piece. By using various unorthodox self-made instruments and techniques such as live coding and circuit bending (where, respectively, hardware and software are manipulated in the performance itself), Bowers, Hellström and Rosén begin to map the ambiguous sonic spaces of Spatial Z.

Ann Rosén: Sound, space, people, meetings, processes and collaborations are all important factors in Ann Roséns art. In her recent works such as Deputy Silences, Schhh and Spatial Silences she explores different aspects of sound and the social context in which it is encountered. As a composer Ann works mainly with EAM (Electr-Acoustic Music) utilizing different surround techniques such as in Surr, IC - first movement, Stress etc. When performing Ann uses a variety of sensor based controllers that she develops and builds herself. In her solo work Ann prefers to work with compositions but together with others such as Hellström and Bowers she often but not always takes on the role as an improviser.

John Bowers is currently a Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Design at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Music, University of East Anglia, UK. As an improvising musician, John is part of Tonesucker, an improvising noise metal electric guitar duo (CD Slaughterhouse available on Onoma Research), the Gentlemen of Circuitry, a quartet who play antique and homemade electronic instruments, and the electro-acoustic improvisors The Zapruda Trio (CD Live at Smallfish available on vision-of-sound), amongst other collaborations. Solo work includes The Dial: Have you been to Hilversum? (broadcast by Resonance FM, London), Do It Yourself Silence and Silence Silenced (contributed to the CD A Call for Silence, Sonic Arts Network), and Atonement for Violin Quartet (Norwich Gallery, UK), a four day long performance - installation - webcast revisiting the instrument destruction preoccupations of Fluxus artists. John is co-founder of the Onoma Research music label. A monograph specifying John’s characteristic approach to music, social science research and technical affairs, Improvising Machines, is available here.

Sten-Olof Hellström has been active as a professional composer since 1984 and gained a Masters of Music in composition at University of East Anglia, England 1990. He has been employed as a researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) since 1997. As a researcher Sten-Olof has mainly worked in the fields of Human Computer Interaction and sonification (representing data with sound). One example of current work is the construction and development of a computer interface for the visually impaired. Sten-Olof’s main occupation and profession is as a composer working with electro-acoustic music. His music has been performed and broadcast around the world . He is also active as a performer playing live electro-acoustic music on his own and with others such as Ann Rosén, John Bowers, Bennett Hogg and Simon Vincent. Sten Olof is also part of Zapruda Trio, the Aspen Duo, Enscharm and others.

[Image: Spatial Silences by Ann Rosén]

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.

To create each performance, this performer misuses software or many technological devices not specific for VJing. Stories based in daily life are told through the selection of the toys and objects she uses.

In this workshop Ana will present her work to an audience as an opening to a dialogue. Attendees of the workshop are invited to bring examples (audiovisual, text, whether online or on DVD) of their own work or of other artists who also use a diverse range of technologies or create their own. This will be base for a debate on the creative ways of using technologies and an inspiration for new or ongoing work.

We hope to see you at both the performance and the workshop. For more information:
Ana Carvalho
Magenta Interior
VJ Theory

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:

- Occurrences within physical space of networked projects, (extenuates, virtual environments, new forms of productions, atmospheres).
- The signification of the appearance of flux as forms of expression (streaming, pod-casting and in general web 2).
- The impact of mobile technologies on artistic expression

Participants: Alejandro Duque, Atau Tanaka, Angus Carlyle, Bastien Gallet, Christian Licoppe, Jean Cristofol, Jean-Paul Thibaud, Jérôme Joy, Julien Clauss, Julien Morel, Nicolas Maigret, Roger Malina, Martin Howse, Peter Sinclair, Philippe Franck, Samuel Bordreuil, Scott Fitzgerald.

This symposium is organised by Locus Sonus and the sociology laboratory LAMES of Aix en Provence, directed by Samuel Bordreuil. This collaboration is part of the research program Audio Extranautes, funded by a contract “accord-cadre” between the CNRS & the French Ministry for Culture (Centre National de La Recherche Scientifique and Ministere de la Culture).

ManifestoDraft - We demand:

:: Give us access to the performer’s mind, to the whole human instrument
:: Obscurantism is dangerous :: Show us your screens
:: Programs are instruments that can change themselves
:: The program is to be transcended - Artificial language is the way
:: Code should be seen as well as heard, underlying algorithms viewed as well as their visual outcome
:: Live coding is not about tools. Algorithms are thoughts. Chainsaws are tools. That’s why algorithms are sometimes harder to notice than chainsaws.

We recognise continuums of interaction and profundity, but prefer:

Insight into algorithms

The skillful extemporisation of algorithm as an expressive/impressive display of mental dexterity
No backup (minidisc, DVD, safety net computer)

We acknowledge that:

It is not necessary for a lay audience to understand the code to appreciate it, much as it is not necessary to know how to play guitar in order to appreciate watching a guitar performance.

Live coding may be accompanied by an impressive display of manual dexterity and the glorification of the typing interface.

Performance involves continuums of interaction, covering perhaps the scope of controls with respect to the parameter space of the artwork, or gestural content, particularly directness of expressive detail. Whilst the traditional haptic rate timing deviations of expressivity in instrumental music are not approximated in code, why repeat the past? No doubt the writing of code and expression of thought will develop its own nuances and customs.

Performances and events closely meeting these manifesto conditions may apply for TOPLAP approval and seal.

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; allowing a programmer very limited improvisation, live alteration, or adjustment of the software during runtime. In contrast with this traditional model, Live Coding provides expressive control over software code during runtime, which allows for live (artistic) improvisation by programmers.

In Live Coding, programmers no longer technically assist performers; they are (co-)performers, using code as an interface to improvise with either different types of performers (ranging from dancers to DJs) or in networks with other live coders.

Test_Lab: Live_Coding will feature debates and presentations on Live Coding, a networked code jamming performance, live coded music, introductions and hands-on experiences in Live Coding programming languages for code improvisation, and a live coded Augmented Reality experience.

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’. Using a game pad to control the robots, music is generated by the resulting interactions of the robots as they pass over audio triggers. Check out the interesting and somewhat esoteric sketches that provided the developmental framework for Al-jazari. [blogged by Paul on DATAISNATURE]