Developing a critical technical audiovisual performance practice engaging with 'the web' as both medium and subject matter.

Context: Live Coding

In the context of my practice, Live Coding has acted as a precursor to my undertaking of this period of research. I became interested in live coding a year or two prior to starting my MA, as one of a few routes into ‘creative coding’ I could investigate, producing a few pieces of work / performances. (Example: Haunted Hall (2023) ↗).

My investigation into Live Coding wasn’t exhaustive, and most of my exposure was to artists and works tied to the Algorave ↗ scene. I initially found this practice very compelling, though on reflection, for me it was less about the music and more about the overall aesthetic of watching people code music and my impression of what that appeared to involve. What I had interpreted as, essentially, real-time software development causing a sonic output, is in reality more like using a novel, text-based interface, to manipulate a robust and premade audio engine. This is not a criticism of algorave or live coding, my initial assumption was quite naive, but it nevertheless introduced me to the notion that perhaps, technical expertise itself was worth exploring as an artistic medium.

Another thing that has remained compelling to me in relation to Live Coding is the culture of creative DIY development that exists around Live Coding, with artists that make their own tools, iterating on what already exists to explore new possibilities in the practice. I particularly have been inspired by Olivia Jack’s Hydra ↗ video synth, built to run in the browser with no outside dependencies.

Much of my critical understanding of live coding and its cultural context(s) come from Live Coding: A User’s Manual (Blackwell et al., 2022), authored by thirty-nine artists, musicians, and developers involved in the diverse practice. What has most resonated with me from this book are the descriptions of philosophies of practice that I would seek to emulate in my own work, these include: openness, sharing of processes, resistance to hierarchy, and, perhaps obviously but crucially, critical engagement with the tools you use, or ‘Critical Technical Practice.

The perspectives put forth in Live Coding: A User’s Manual, plus my own short-lived engagement with making live coded music, have definitely influenced the practice I have worked to develop through this research project. Admittedly, less in the sense of musical outputs, but more as examples of novel and exciting creative software development practices, and politically radical modes of thinking about producing and curating art.

I do not perform live coding in any way now, but things I have taken ‘with me’ from live coding are; sharing my screen as a means of showing gesture and process exposition, making my own tools, and engaging critically with the technologies I use to create my works.