Live Coding Network
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Sussex
Department Name: Sch of Media, Film and Music
Abstract
This network will take the relatively new field of live coding research to its next development stage and strengthen the UK's position as one of the leading countries in this field. It will bring together researchers from a wide variety of disciplines to explore how live coding can enrich technological engagement in wider culture.
Live coding is a new approach to creative expression using computers. In live coding, the innards of software are exposed and rewired through live, direct, and exploratory use of custom made programming languages. Practitioners perform on stage by writing code that generates the audiovisual work; it is a form of real-time notating or scoring music, visuals, dance or robotics. The screen is projected, enabling the audience to follow the development of the code. Since the computer interprets the code live, every edit to the code is immediately reflected in the musical or visual end result.
Live coding has a strong pedagogical and performance element, and has proven to be applicable right across the arts, research, and industry. Interest in live coding is growing across science, technology and engineering: the digital arts are uniquely placed in the field of technological innovation, as they place the human experience of programming at the core of technological interaction. Live coding is a field where technological development is arts-led, and where computer languages are seen as rich environments for creative expression.
This trans-disciplinary network will bring key researchers and practitioners from diverse disciplines together with the aim of enabling dialogue and research collaboration across academy and industry. The network will serve as a hub for activities in research, development, and education; activities will take place internationally, and be strongly centred within the UK research landscape. Although the network is UK based, it includes leading international researchers in the field, and it will foster for strong international outreach and industry connections, that will support and maintain the UKs leading role as the centre of live coding research and practice.
The network will explore themes of live coding in the arts, computing in education, and cultural engagement. This will be investigated through three workshops, one international conference, and diverse publications. Wider cultural impact will be achieved through industry events, musical performances, media engagement, online fora, software releases, and public workshops. The network will disseminate its research to other researchers and the general public through a strong, open access web-presence.
The past ten years have seen many exciting developments in live coding, which has matured into an established approach in the digital arts, visible across published literature (including a forthcoming Computer Music Journal special issue), academic conferences, digital arts festivals, and in national and international media. Working with the fundamental premise that everybody can program computers, provided that the goals are interesting and the right tools are available, live coding is uniquely placed to bridge relationships across the educational, academic and industry sectors, and contribute to the recent emphasis on programming in the national curriculum.
Live coding is a new approach to creative expression using computers. In live coding, the innards of software are exposed and rewired through live, direct, and exploratory use of custom made programming languages. Practitioners perform on stage by writing code that generates the audiovisual work; it is a form of real-time notating or scoring music, visuals, dance or robotics. The screen is projected, enabling the audience to follow the development of the code. Since the computer interprets the code live, every edit to the code is immediately reflected in the musical or visual end result.
Live coding has a strong pedagogical and performance element, and has proven to be applicable right across the arts, research, and industry. Interest in live coding is growing across science, technology and engineering: the digital arts are uniquely placed in the field of technological innovation, as they place the human experience of programming at the core of technological interaction. Live coding is a field where technological development is arts-led, and where computer languages are seen as rich environments for creative expression.
This trans-disciplinary network will bring key researchers and practitioners from diverse disciplines together with the aim of enabling dialogue and research collaboration across academy and industry. The network will serve as a hub for activities in research, development, and education; activities will take place internationally, and be strongly centred within the UK research landscape. Although the network is UK based, it includes leading international researchers in the field, and it will foster for strong international outreach and industry connections, that will support and maintain the UKs leading role as the centre of live coding research and practice.
The network will explore themes of live coding in the arts, computing in education, and cultural engagement. This will be investigated through three workshops, one international conference, and diverse publications. Wider cultural impact will be achieved through industry events, musical performances, media engagement, online fora, software releases, and public workshops. The network will disseminate its research to other researchers and the general public through a strong, open access web-presence.
The past ten years have seen many exciting developments in live coding, which has matured into an established approach in the digital arts, visible across published literature (including a forthcoming Computer Music Journal special issue), academic conferences, digital arts festivals, and in national and international media. Working with the fundamental premise that everybody can program computers, provided that the goals are interesting and the right tools are available, live coding is uniquely placed to bridge relationships across the educational, academic and industry sectors, and contribute to the recent emphasis on programming in the national curriculum.
Planned Impact
Live coding is attracting increasing interest from diverse fields, due to issues around technology, culture, language and creativity that it makes visible. Below, we list the specific Impact Areas (IAs) that will benefit from this research network.
IA1: Cultural and creative industries
Programming is common across the cultural and creative industries, including computer games (see IA3), but also areas such as film animation, architecture, music technology, interactive design and other digital arts practice. By engaging with creative agencies, including project partners Field, academia and industry involve in a bidirectional relationship where both can learn from each other's processes (e.g. http://tinyurl.com/br47jym) by exchanging new technologies and methods. This network will establish strong links between industry and academia through planned activities and online channels that will outlast the project's lifetime.
IA2: Education
Computer programming is now a national priority in government policy and educational curricula (see for example http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16493929). Live coding is of growing interest to this area, with project partner Blackwell working with the Raspberry PI foundation to introduce live coding in schools. Professor Mark Guzdial (recipient of IEEE teaching award for computing education) has demonstrated dramatic impacts on gender balance in higher education, and has publicly stated that live coding in computer science lectures is "best practice".
IA3: Computer Games
Live coding applies to computer games not only to exploratory game design, but the inclusion of programmable behaviour as part of end-user game mechanics. Project partner Griffiths (FoAM) is actively carrying out research into in-game programming languages, with projected impact on the computer games industry, but also the related field of "serious games," where educational topics are explored through playful interfaces. Live coding allows for changing a game in real-time, useful when considering the application domains of serious games (such as key-hole surgery and more).
IA4: Music and Performance Technology
The growth of live coding has benefitted by the thirst for new technology in musical culture, to find new sounds and means of expression. Music technology research is well developed, through academic conferences such as New Interfaces for Musical Expression, and through strong links to a thriving music technology industry. This network will create contexts where live coding is exposed directly to musicians and artists in other performance arts.
IA5: Software engineering
Software engineers have operated with a concept of interactive programming for a while, but in practice this has largely been limited to the debugging of already written code. Live coding brings this practice into a new light, opening up programming as a collaborative activity, enabling groups of programmers to work on running code together. It thus adds a new tool to the research field and practice of Extreme Programming (where two or more programmers collaborate).
IA6: Cognitive neuroscience
The neurological substrates of language is a research interest for many cognitive neuroscientists, such as project partner Benn. Due to the tightly controlled conditions required for experimental methods, such research often focusses on the use of formal language, e.g., mathematics. Live coding is exciting for this field as an example of language use in live, social and creative situations, yet more readily observable than natural language.
IA7: Wider culture
Technology is invading our lives through smartphone apps, on-line social networks and the move towards ubiquitous computing. Live coding presents technology as open, manipulable, and social. The importance of this is recognised by cultural researchers such as the Participatory IT group in Aarhus, who are now investigating participatory design of programming languages.
IA1: Cultural and creative industries
Programming is common across the cultural and creative industries, including computer games (see IA3), but also areas such as film animation, architecture, music technology, interactive design and other digital arts practice. By engaging with creative agencies, including project partners Field, academia and industry involve in a bidirectional relationship where both can learn from each other's processes (e.g. http://tinyurl.com/br47jym) by exchanging new technologies and methods. This network will establish strong links between industry and academia through planned activities and online channels that will outlast the project's lifetime.
IA2: Education
Computer programming is now a national priority in government policy and educational curricula (see for example http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16493929). Live coding is of growing interest to this area, with project partner Blackwell working with the Raspberry PI foundation to introduce live coding in schools. Professor Mark Guzdial (recipient of IEEE teaching award for computing education) has demonstrated dramatic impacts on gender balance in higher education, and has publicly stated that live coding in computer science lectures is "best practice".
IA3: Computer Games
Live coding applies to computer games not only to exploratory game design, but the inclusion of programmable behaviour as part of end-user game mechanics. Project partner Griffiths (FoAM) is actively carrying out research into in-game programming languages, with projected impact on the computer games industry, but also the related field of "serious games," where educational topics are explored through playful interfaces. Live coding allows for changing a game in real-time, useful when considering the application domains of serious games (such as key-hole surgery and more).
IA4: Music and Performance Technology
The growth of live coding has benefitted by the thirst for new technology in musical culture, to find new sounds and means of expression. Music technology research is well developed, through academic conferences such as New Interfaces for Musical Expression, and through strong links to a thriving music technology industry. This network will create contexts where live coding is exposed directly to musicians and artists in other performance arts.
IA5: Software engineering
Software engineers have operated with a concept of interactive programming for a while, but in practice this has largely been limited to the debugging of already written code. Live coding brings this practice into a new light, opening up programming as a collaborative activity, enabling groups of programmers to work on running code together. It thus adds a new tool to the research field and practice of Extreme Programming (where two or more programmers collaborate).
IA6: Cognitive neuroscience
The neurological substrates of language is a research interest for many cognitive neuroscientists, such as project partner Benn. Due to the tightly controlled conditions required for experimental methods, such research often focusses on the use of formal language, e.g., mathematics. Live coding is exciting for this field as an example of language use in live, social and creative situations, yet more readily observable than natural language.
IA7: Wider culture
Technology is invading our lives through smartphone apps, on-line social networks and the move towards ubiquitous computing. Live coding presents technology as open, manipulable, and social. The importance of this is recognised by cultural researchers such as the Participatory IT group in Aarhus, who are now investigating participatory design of programming languages.
Organisations
- University of Sussex (Lead Research Organisation, Project Partner)
- Sound and Music (Collaboration)
- OPEN DATA INSTITUTE (Collaboration)
- BRITISH SCIENCE ASSOCIATION (Collaboration)
- CRAFTS COUNCIL (Collaboration)
- Aarhus University (Project Partner)
- University of Sheffield (Project Partner)
- Sheffield Hallam University (Project Partner)
- FoAM vzw (Project Partner)
- University of Birmingham (Project Partner)
- University of Cambridge (Project Partner)
- University of Lincoln (Project Partner)
- Goldsmiths University of London (Project Partner)
Publications
Blackwell Alan F.
(2022)
Live Coding: A User's Manual
Collins N
(2014)
Algorave: A survey of the history, aesthetics and technology of live performance of algorithmic electronic dance music
in Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression
Francisco Bernardo
(2019)
An AudioWorklet-based signal engine for a live coding language ecosystem
in Proceedings of Web Audio Conference (WAC-2019)
Hession P
(2014)
Extending Instruments with Live Algorithms in a Percussion / Code Duo
in Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Convention of the AISB: Live Algorithms
Hession, P
(2014)
Extending instruments with live algorithms in a percussion / code duo
Magnusson T
(2020)
Scoring Sound: Creative Music Coding with SuperCollider
Magnusson T
(2016)
Writing with shaky hands
in International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media
Magnusson T
(2014)
Herding Cats: Observing Live Coding in the Wild
in Computer Music Journal
Magnusson T
(2019)
Proceedings of the International Conference on Live Coding
| Title | Algorave in Brighton |
| Description | The Algorave club night in Brighton was held the night before our Live Coding and the Body symposium, as a way of welcoming the participants to the city, to the symposium. Some of the symposium participants performed in the event. The event was attended by diverse people, and included a strong group of international performers. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Impact | After the club night, we had various enquiries from the public regarding how to get started in live coding. |
| URL | http://algorave.com/brighton/ |
| Title | Live coding performances by Alex McLean during 2014 |
| Description | A range of solo and collaborative live coding performances by Alex McLean, using his free/open source Tidal live coding software. 22/Feb/14 - White building, London with Leafcutter John 12/Mar/14 - iFIMPAC Leeds, Canute performance Matthew Yee-King 15/Mar/14 - Site Gallery Sheffield, Sound Choreography Body Code with Kate Sicchio 19/Mar/14 - Rhizome, New Museum, New York - Remote (streamed) solo performance 22/Mar/14 - Amsterdam Algorave, OCCII with FIBER and STEIM, Canute performance (w/ Matthew Yee-King) 02/Apr/14 - Live Algorithms workshop, AISB, Improv with Paul Hession 26/Apr/14 - Algorave Gateshead, Old Police House, Algorithmic Yorkshire (live code collab with Ash Sagar) 26/Apr/14 - Maker Faire UK, Newcastle, solo performance 17/May/14 - Antwerp Trix, solo remote streamed performance 20/May/14 - Thinking Digital Arts, performance with Dave Griffiths 23/May/14 - TransX transmission art symposium, performance with David Ogborn and Eldad Tsabary 10/Jun/14 - ISCMME Leeds, performance with Greta Eacott 03/Jul/14 - NIME London, Corsica Studios, Canute performance Matthew Yee-King 06/Jul/14 - Audacious Space, LUD performance with Adam Denton 08/Jul/14 - Manchester Algorave, Deaf Institute, solo performance 19/Jul/14 - Access Space Digithon Sheffield, solo performance 27/Jul/14 - Tramlines festival, Millennium Galleries Sheffield, LUD performance with Adam Denton 29/Aug/14 - Electromagnetic Field festival, Milton Keynes, solo performance 05/Sep/14 - Konstepidemin gallery, Gothenburg, solo performance 20/Sep/14 - Remote (streamed) solo performance, Wallriss Fribourg, remote streamed performance 26/Sep/14 - Network Music Festival, Canute performance Matthew Yee-King 04/Oct/14 - Fierce Festival, Birmingham, solo performance 25/Oct/14 - March of the Robots festival, Leeds, Slub performance with Dave Griffiths 28/Oct/14 - Algorave Ghent, Solo performance 13/Nov/14 - Torque Liverpool, Canute performance with Matthew Yee-King 22/Nov/14 - International Conference on Live Interfaces, Lisbon, solo performance 14/Dec/14 - Hack Circus, Showrooms Sheffield, solo performance |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Impact | Reaching thousands of people in a range of performances, including electronic dance music, free jazz improv and choreographic works. |
| URL | http://slab.org/events/ |
| Title | Live coding performances by Alex McLean during 2015 |
| Description | Solo and Collaborative performance using my free/open source Tidal live coding environment. 17/Jan/15, Algorave Karlsruhe, Germany, Canute performance w/ Matthew Yee-King 20/Feb/15, Electric Spring festival, Huddersfield, solo performance 20/Mar/15, Sound as Being, Lancaster, Remote multichannel live coding 20/Mar/15, Computer club algorave, Sheffield, Canute performnace w/ Matthew Yee-King) 11/Apr/15, Furtherfield gallery London, Remote (streamed) solo performance, Torque exhibition 09/May/15, Munich Kunstareal festival, performance with Dave Griffiths and Ellen Harlizius-Klück 29/May/15, South Bank Centre London, Shared buffer performance with Matthew Yee-King, David Ogborn, Eldad Tsabury, Alexandra Cardenas and Ian Jarvis 12/Jun/15, Theatre Delicatessen Sheffield, performance Anticipation performance with Alex Keegan 26/Jun/15, xCoAx Glasgow 2015, solo performance 11/Jul/15, Algorave, Access Space, Sheffield, solo performance 14/Aug/15, International Symposium on Electronic Art, Vancouver, solo performance 07/Sep/15, British Science Festival, Bradford, solo performance More information 11/Sep/15, IBC Hackfest, Amsterdam, Remote (streamed) solo performance 18/Sep/15, Incubate Festival Tilburg, Canute performance w/ Matthew Yee-King 22/Sep/15, Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania, in collaboration with David Littler 27/Sep/15, International Computer Music Conference, Denton, Texas. Shared buffer network performance with David Ogborn, Alexandra Cardenas, Eldad Tsabary 10/Oct/15, Algorave Sheffield, Connect the Dots festival, solo performance 12/Nov/15, Manchester Algorave, Texture, solo performance 18/Dec/15, Powerlunches London, solo performance |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Impact | Thousands of people reached through many performances. |
| URL | http://slab.org/events/ |
| Title | Performance artwork: Sound Choreographer <> Body Code |
| Description | A performance developed between choreographer, dancer and senior lecturer Dr Kate Sicchio and live coder, musician and research fellow Dr Alex McLean, where choreographic and musical notations are connected during a live performance, between coder and dancer. This work has been performed at major venues in London, Manchester, Sheffield and Frankfurt as well as published in academic venues. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2013 |
| Impact | Engaged with 100s of audience members, contributed to motion:bank project in Frankfurt. |
| URL | http://blog.sicchio.com/?page_id=350 |
| Title | Performance at the Encounters Film Festival in Bristol |
| Description | This performance was part of an evening with four acts. It took place in the concert venue at Arnolfini. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Impact | Connected with other artists and promoted live coding as a performance method. |
| URL | http://encounters-festival.org.uk/news/events/cine-seizure/ |
| Title | Threnoscope Software |
| Description | The Threnoscope is a live coding system focusing on three key areas of music: spatial sound, timbre and texture, and tunings and scales. It has affordances that result in long durational notes that can move around in space, change timbre (through filtering, resonance frequencies and waveforms) and pitch according to implementation of numerous tunings and scales. The Threnoscope was intitially intended to be a musical piece, but became an expressive system, an investigation into spatial sound, wave interferences and the relationship of harmonic ratios and tuning systems from the world's various musical systems. Implementing the Scala tuning library standard, the Thrensocope has access over 5000 tuning systems and scales, and it contains an application for creating your own microtonal tunings and scales. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Impact | The Threnoscope has been used by composers around the world, but with the public release of the software the general public has access to it. |
| URL | https://thormagnusson.github.io/threnoscope/ |
| Title | Threnoscope at Transmute |
| Description | Live coding performance at the Transmute event which was part of the 2014 Brighton Digital Festival. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Impact | Two collaborations came out of this performance, one with a visual designer (live drawing), and one with a brain scientist. |
| URL | http://www.brightondigitalfestival.co.uk/events/transmute-at-phoenix-arts/ |
| Title | Two Live coding performances at La Escucha Errante festival |
| Description | La Escucha Errante is a yearly music festival in Bilbao, organised by the Conservatory of Bilbao and the University of the Basque Country. Thor Magnusson performed with the Threnoscope live coding system, together with Iñigo Ibaibarriaga on Saxophone. He later performed with the ixi lang live coding system, during the Algorumba session. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Impact | The performances gave a good idea of how live coding happens in performance contexts. Audience members were interested and our software has been downloaded multiple times as a result of these performances. We have also been invited to perform in other festivals in the Basque Country as a result of this trip. |
| URL | http://laboratorioklem.com/Espacio_klem_2014.html |
| Title | Two Live coding performances at the 2014 Dark Music Days in Iceland |
| Description | Thor Magnusson performed two concerts the first one a three hour live coding performance using the Threnoscope, collaborating with nine classical music performers. The other concert was in the evening, where ixi lang was used for some beat based performance. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Impact | These two concerts introduced live coding to audiences in Iceland. The ixi lang is now used as part of curriculum in the Icelandic Music Academy. |
| URL | http://darkmusicdays.is |
| Description | The two years of AHRC-funded Live Coding Research Network activities were activity packed. We run four symposia, various workshops, concerts and an international conference. Most importantly, we have managed to consolidate a large group of international researchers from diverse disciplines (e.g., music, art, computing, psychology, education) that are now connected through stronger ties by means of diverse media platforms. Diverse participants in the LCRN activities have established their own research projects as a result of the network. Thanks to high-profile research and media presence, the public has become strongly aware of live coding as a method for artistic performance, suffice to mention examples from this week (February 29th, 2016) where Dr Alex McLean's live coding activities are featured in The Wire Magazine (www.thewire.co.uk) and Dr Sam Aaron is interviewed on BBC about the Sonic Pi live coding language, which runs on the popular Raspberry Pi computer. We are happy to witness that the concept of "Algorave" as a distinct music genre is gaining a place in public consciousness. (see www.algorave.com) (see also the following Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/music/video/2017/nov/30/run-the-code-is-algorave-the-future-of-dance-music) Participants in the network have been highly active in organising public events: talks, residencies, workshops, performances, concerts, hackathons. These events have been impactful in that they engage the public and we have seen a considerable increase in live coding activities during the two years that we've run the network. The term "live coding" is increasingly being used in the context of IT education, and young people are engaging with this field through diverse means, for example live coding events within the Minecraft virtual world. We are happy to have observed an interest in live coding from hearing and visually impaired people. At our first symposium event in Brighton, a profoundly deaf musician gave their first performance by means of live coding. This person reports that seeing the code helps him to understand other people's music and perform his own. Our own (McLean and Magnusson's) live coding environments, Tidal, ixi lang and the Threnoscope, have now established userbases. Several people have used this software as platforms for research, and thousands of people are using it to make music including many performances and several album releases. The AHRC funded MIMIC project is a result of this network, and, by implication the AHRC follow-on project Innovating Sema. These projects explore the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in live coding and creative coding. Finally, as a result of this network, a few members from the network are co-writing a book on live coding for MIT Press. The book is with the press and will be published as open access publication in 2021. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2013 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal |
| Description | Computer/Curator award |
| Amount | £2,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Sound and Music |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2014 |
| End | 03/2015 |
| Description | Innovating Sema: Community-building of Live Coding Language Design and Performance with Machine Learning |
| Amount | £80,583 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | AH/V005154/1 |
| Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2021 |
| End | 09/2021 |
| Description | MIMIC: Musically Intelligent Machines Interacting Creatively |
| Amount | £806,693 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | AH/R002657/1 |
| Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 05/2018 |
| End | 04/2021 |
| Description | PENELOPE: A study of weaving as a technical mode of existence |
| Amount | € 1,943,771 (EUR) |
| Funding ID | 682711 |
| Organisation | European Research Council (ERC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | Belgium |
| Start | 12/2016 |
| End | 11/2021 |
| Description | Sonic Writing: Technologies of Musical Expression, Notation and Encoding |
| Amount | £190,267 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | AH/N00194X/1 |
| Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2016 |
| End | 04/2018 |
| Title | Live coding research development |
| Description | The development of Live Coding as an academic research network with close ties to the TOPLAP network of practitioners |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Ongoing connections between developers, artists, researchers and other practitioners interested in live coding. |
| URL | http://toplap.org |
| Description | Collaboration with National Organisations |
| Organisation | British Science Association |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | A two-way exchange in collaborating in events. |
| Collaborator Contribution | See above. |
| Impact | The Sonic Pattern symposia in collaboration with Crafts Council UK An Algorave at the British Science Festival with the British Science Association Our final symposium and an evening of live coding performances at Somerset House London with the Sound and Music UK agency for New Music. A talk at their annual conference and co-hosting our final event with Sound and Music with the Open Data Institute |
| Start Year | 2014 |
| Description | Collaboration with National Organisations |
| Organisation | Crafts Council |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | A two-way exchange in collaborating in events. |
| Collaborator Contribution | See above. |
| Impact | The Sonic Pattern symposia in collaboration with Crafts Council UK An Algorave at the British Science Festival with the British Science Association Our final symposium and an evening of live coding performances at Somerset House London with the Sound and Music UK agency for New Music. A talk at their annual conference and co-hosting our final event with Sound and Music with the Open Data Institute |
| Start Year | 2014 |
| Description | Collaboration with National Organisations |
| Organisation | Open Data Institute |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | A two-way exchange in collaborating in events. |
| Collaborator Contribution | See above. |
| Impact | The Sonic Pattern symposia in collaboration with Crafts Council UK An Algorave at the British Science Festival with the British Science Association Our final symposium and an evening of live coding performances at Somerset House London with the Sound and Music UK agency for New Music. A talk at their annual conference and co-hosting our final event with Sound and Music with the Open Data Institute |
| Start Year | 2014 |
| Description | Collaboration with National Organisations |
| Organisation | Sound and Music |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | A two-way exchange in collaborating in events. |
| Collaborator Contribution | See above. |
| Impact | The Sonic Pattern symposia in collaboration with Crafts Council UK An Algorave at the British Science Festival with the British Science Association Our final symposium and an evening of live coding performances at Somerset House London with the Sound and Music UK agency for New Music. A talk at their annual conference and co-hosting our final event with Sound and Music with the Open Data Institute |
| Start Year | 2014 |
| Title | Sema |
| Description | Sema lets you compose and perform music in real time using simple live coding languages. It also enables you to customise these languages, create new ones, and infuse your live code with bespoke neural networks, using interactive workflows and small training data sets. Sema is a live coding environment for sound and music similar to SuperCollider, TidalCycles and Gibber. Uniquely, it provides many domain-specific languages and an integrated experience to language design and machine learning in your Web browser. This is achieved through the integration of: |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | We have run various workshops and tutorials during this project. At the moment we have an artist programme where artists are developing work using the platform. |
| URL | https://sema.codes |
| Title | Threnoscope |
| Description | The Threnoscope system implements a live coding mini-language for drone-based microtonal composition. It is a system built in SuperCollider and makes use its powerful audio server to run complex synth instances that can be controlled through the interface modalities. The design goal was to create a helpful graphical representation of the sonic texture in microtonal drone music. The system notates selected features of the drones, such as the spatial location, pitch, amplitude, filtering, and other parameters in a two dimensional score. Instead of the traditional linear score, the Threnoscope is circular, where drones (or the notes) circumnavigate a multichannel pitch space. The piece is composed for multichannel surround where the idea is to visualise the location of sound in space |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | The software has been used in performances. Various composers have expressed interest in composing a piece for the system and this will be explored in the coming months. |
| URL | http://vimeo.com/63335988 |
| Title | Tidal |
| Description | Live coding language for performance of music |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2013 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | A worldwide community of practice developing around the software, including one user in the US who won a national composition prize using it. |
| URL | http://tidal.lurk.org |
| Title | Tidal 0.7 |
| Description | Domain specific language for the live coding of pattern. Version 0.7 includes much enhanced functionality for composition and improvisation, and tight integration with the SuperCollider language. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | Hundreds of users, many performances and music releases. |
| URL | http://tidal.lurk.org |
| Description | ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Functional Art, Music, Modelling and Design |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Alex McLean chaired the 2nd edition in October 2014, Gothenburg, and is now on the steering committee of this annual workshop co-located with the International Conference on Functional Programming, which includes an evening of live coding and algorithmic music performance, open to the public. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://functional-art.org/ |
| Description | Brighton Mini Maker Faire |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | As part of the yearly run Brighton Mini Maker Faire (a DIY technology event aimed at young people), we ran a hands-on introduction on live coding music and using open source software. The software introduced will be ixi lang and Sonic Pi. Participants will get familiar with both environments, and equipped for further explorations of musical composition and performance. We had about two hundred participants over the day, who got into live coding music in a lab filled with computers. We had three young tutors with us: boys and girls from the age of 10 to 16. The young people who participated in the event reported that they enjoyed creating music through code and that they had not imagined that it would be this easy. We also saw a considerable increase in downloads of the ixi lang software after the event. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://miptl.org/site/live-coding/brighton-mini-maker-faire-live-coding-music-in-5-minutes-bring-you... |
| Description | Conference talk at the Musical Materialities Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | The paper, The Materiality of Code in Computer Music: On Metaphors and the States of Gates, introduced live coding to a wide range of music theorists. People expressed interest in live coding as a performance method. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/musmat/conference/ |
| Description | International Conference on Live Interfaces |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The 3rd International Conference on Live Interfaces was held at the University of Sussex's Attenborough Centre between June 28th - July 3rd. The conference focusses on the role of the live interface in the performing arts. The keynotes this year were magician Stuart Nolan, instrument maker Kristina Andersen, and puppeteer Roman Paska. The conference took take place at the University of Sussex in June, 2016. This biennial conference brought together people working with live interfaces in the performing arts, including music, the visual arts, dance, puppetry, robotics or games. The conference scope was highly interdisciplinary but with a focus on interface technologies of expression in the area of performance. Topics of liveness, immediacy, presence (and tele-presence), mediation, collaboration and timing or flow were engaged with and questioned in order to gain a deeper understanding of the role contemporary media technologies play in human expression. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://www.liveinterfaces.org |
| Description | Live Audiovisual Coding Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This workshop in audiovisual live coding, given by the Thor Magnusson, introduced live coding to animators and audiovisual artists in the Bristol area. The workshop was part of the Encounters Film Festival, so it had a moving image emphasis. Some participants downloaded the live coding systems taught: ixi lang and SuperCollider and are now using them in their work. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/live-audiovisual-coding-workshop |
| Description | Live Coding Presentation and Workshop at MediaLab Prado, Madrid |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Medialab-Prado in Madrid regularly organises live coding events. Thor Magnusson presented his work on live coding research and notation: ixiQuarks, ixi lang and Threnoscope software demonstrated, and then a SuperCollider workshop. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://medialab-prado.es/article/visitantes-de-live-coding-en-madrid |
| Description | Live Coding related interviews with Alex McLean |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Emily Bick, Pattern Recognition, The Wire, March 2016 Estoteric codes interview with Daniel Temkin, December 2015 Dr Sarah Bell, Live coding brings programming to life, British Science Association blog, September 2015 Live coding and algorave, a composer-curator guest post on the Sound and Music sampler blog, February 2015 Jakob Bauer, Dancing the Code radio interview, Der junge Kulturkanal, January 2015 Alejandro Tauber, Coden in de club, April 2014 Ebony Nembhard, Headsup. Algorave, Now Then magazine, March 2014 Conversation between Kate Sicchio and Alex McLean, Hack Circus, March 2014 Paul Squires, In conversation with Kate Sicchio and Alex McLean, Imperica, March 2014 Robert Barry, I For One Welcome Our New Robot Vocal Cords: Radical Computer Music, The Quietus, February 2014 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014,2015,2016 |
| URL | http://slab.org/interviews-etc/ |
| Description | Live coding related talks by Alex McLean in 2014 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Talks by Alex McLean on the topic of Live Coding at a range of venues during 2014. 23/Mar/14 - Keynote talk, STEIM Amsterdam 30/Apr/14 - Torque symposium, Liverpool 19/May/14 - British Academy event "External Engagement in the Arts and Humanities", York 21/May/14 - Culture Lab, Newcastle 25/May/14 - Connect the Dots festival, Sheffield 21/Aug/14 - dotdotdot, onedotzero, London 12/Oct/14 - Cheltenham Festival of Literature 20/Nov/14 - Make:Shift - Craft Council conference 26/Nov/14 - University of York |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://slab.org/events/ |
| Description | Live coding related talks by Alex McLean in 2015 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A range of talks by Alex McLean on the topic of Live coding during 2015 03/Nov/15, Panel session at Open Data Institute summit, London 21/Sep/15, Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania 07/Sep/15, Award lecture, British Science Festival, Bradford 27/May/15, "Textility of Live Code" at the 2nd Workshop on Philosophy of Human+Computer Interaction, Sheffield 20/Mar/15, Talk about live code and looms at Dorkbotsheffield #8, Access Space Sheffield 16/Apr/15, Talk and panel session on live coding, Resonate festival, Belgrade 26/Feb/15, Research seminar in School of Music, University of Leeds: "Live coding of music; a window into creative collaboration?" |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://slab.org/events/ |
| Description | Mass media engagement with live coding |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A range of mass media interviews and other coverage of live coding, on TV, in print and online, including: Tracks, Live Coding and Algorave feature, Arte TV (France and Germany), January 2014 Robert Barry, I For One Welcome Our New Robot Vocal Cords: Radical Computer Music, The Quietus, February 2014 Paul Squires, In conversation with Kate Sicchio and Alex McLean, Imperica, March 2014 Conversation between Kate Sicchio and Alex McLean, Hack Circus, March 2014 Ebony Nembhard, Headsup. Algorave, Now Then magazine, March 2014 Alejandro Tauber, Coden in de club, Vice (Motherboard), April 2014 Broad interest in live coding and the development of Algorave as an international movement, now developing towards a musical genre in its own right. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | Panel presentation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Piteå Performing Arts Biennial seeks new formats for the performing arts to engage in societal issues. The first edition-postponed to 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic-focuses on ecological perspectives, and further seeks engagement in questions related to site and place. On October 26-27, an online pre event presents some perspectives on how the performing arts address these issues in the time of the pandemic. Particular focus is given to digital presence, as discussed in three panels in the third edition of Physically Distant. While the biennial will host a series of new productions of ecological sound art, site-specific arts projects, dance and theatre productions, intermedia arts projects, film and video screenings, the pre event presents three concerts with telematic performance, a live radio show and a series of shorter streamed performances, as well as fixed media artwork on the website. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://studioacusticum.se/ecology-site-and-place-pitea-international-performing-arts-biennial-2020-... |
| Description | Seeing Sound Panel |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | In this panel discussion, we'll look at new and emerging aesthetics in audiovisual practice that defy existing genre categorisation, new ways of working and new audiences. Chair - Joseph Hyde |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | http://www.seeingsound.co.uk/seeing-sound-2020/2020-panels/ |
| Description | Sema Summer School |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Would you like to use machine learning as part of musical live coding? Would you like to create your own live coding language? We are inviting you to participate in a free workshop that will take place online in early July. With daily videos, Zoom sessions and follow-up online hangouts, we will get you up and running in using our new technologies for using AI in live coding. As part of our work in the MIMIC project, we have created Sema: an online system for live coding with AI in the browser. Here you can apply many of the machine learning technologies we have implemented as part of our MIMIC work, but moreover: you can design your own live coding language! We believe every new live coding language results in new musical approaches, which implies that for a diversity of music we need a diversity of languages. Sema enables you to write your own language, whether it is one piece of music, an instrument, a pattern generator, or a full blown live coding language. Sema will be officially launched just before the start of the workshop, so you will be one of the first users to test this new technology and design your own live coding languages for machine learning in music. There is no previous experience required to participate in this Sema workshop. Although you do not need any machine learning expertise, you will benefit from beginner-level JavaScript programming skills. You don't even have to be an experienced musician. This workshop will introduce the basic concepts of musical live coding with AI, and get people up to speed in using Sema and creating their own live coding languages. We are hoping that workshop participants will contribute in a user-study that will help us to develop the system further. We will run a flipped-learning workshop where we release introductory tutorial videos each day and workshop participants study them in their own time. We then have a synchronous Zoom Q&A workshop session at 3pm every day. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | http://www.emutelab.org/blog/Semaworkshop |
| Description | Sonic Pattern and the textility of code |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A collaboration between Alex McLean and Karen Gaskill (director of the Innovation Programme at the Crafts Council and independent curator), bringing digital and textile arts and crafts together in philosophical engagement. These events took place 30/Apr/14 London, 17/Jun/15 Sheffield and 21-22/Sep/15 Kaunas, with more events to follow. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014,2015 |
| URL | http://sonicpattern.com/ |
| Description | Tidal and ixi lang workshop at Access Space in Sheffield |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | This workshop introduced two mini languages for live coding - Tidal and ixi lang. The PI and the Co-I are working on a research paper relating to teaching these languages and the workshop finished with an evaluative discussion afterwards as well as filling out an online questionnaire. This workshop got people interested and up and running with these new live coding environments. People have kept in touch after the workshops and participated in later events. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.netbehaviour.org/pipermail/netbehaviour/20131211/030526.html |
| Description | Tidal and ixi lang workshop at dotBrighton |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | This workshop introduced two mini languages for live coding - Tidal and ixi lang. The PI and the Co-I are working on a research paper relating to teaching these languages and the workshop finished with an evaluative discussion afterwards as well as filling out an online questionnaire. This workshop got people interested and up and running with these new live coding environments. People have kept in touch after the workshops and participated in later events. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.livecodenetwork.org/event/hands-on-workshop-live-coding-with-ixi-lang-and-tidal/ |
| Description | Workshop on Live Coding at the ICLC conference in Limerick |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | There are compelling opportunities for empowering the live coding community with new artistic processes and outcomes that may arise from the integration of real-time interactive signal processing and machine learning technologies, in a scalable and accessible environment such as the web browser. This workshop was part of the MIMIC research project, which explores how machine learning and machine listening can be designed in a user-friendly way and provide for live coding, rapid prototyping and fast development cycles of musical applications. Participants got familiar with our live coding language design environment and language design techniques, preparing them to work in the creation of their own live coding languages. Participants learned how to express sound and music concepts using signal processing expressions. They experimented with selected machine learning models and machine listening JavaScript classes and explore some of their direct benefits, including beat detection, pattern detection and generation. Participants gained understanding about workflows in our system that will allow then to develop their own live coding mini-language using language design techniques. They learned how to create, inspect and change language specifications to generate language parsers. Participants will also explore practical techniques for performing with the live coding mini-languages they have constructed or customised, including live coding with interactive machine learning and pre-trained generative models. Additionally, the workshop included a group discussion about participants' experience learning and using our system. As a result of this workshop, we believe participants gained a better understanding of what signal processing, machine learning machine listening are in the context of live coding language design and performance. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://iclc.toplap.org/2020/workshop1.html |