Alan F. Blackwell - Live Coding: A Users Manual

Software Studies

Lev Manovich and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, editors

Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, 2009

Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life, Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge, 2011

Programmed Visions: Software and Memory, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, 2011

Speaking Code: Coding as Aesthetic and Political Expression, Geoff Cox and Alex McLean, 2012

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost, Jeremy Douglass, Mark Marino, Michael Mateas, Casey Reas, Mark Sample, and Noah Vawter, 2012

The Imaginary App, Paul D. Miller and Svitlana Matviyenko, 2014

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, Benjamin H. Bratton, 2015

Coding Literacy: How Computer Programming Is Changing Writing, Annette Vee, 2017

The Software Arts, Warren Sack, 2019

Critical Code Studies, Mark C. Marino, 2020

How Pac-Man Eats, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, 2020

Live Coding: A Users Manual, Alan F. Blackwell, Emma Cocker, Geoff Cox, Alex McLean, and Thor Magnusson, 2022

Live Coding

A Users Manual

Alan F. Blackwell, Emma Cocker, Geoff Cox, Alex McLean, and Thor Magnusson

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2022 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This work is subject to a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license.

Subject to such license, all rights are reserved.

The MIT Press would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers who provided comments on drafts of this book. The generous work of academic experts is essential for establishing the authority and quality of our publications. We acknowledge with gratitude the contributions of these otherwise uncredited readers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Blackwell, Alan F., author. | Cocker, Emma, author. | Cox, Geoff, author. | McLean, Alex, 1975 author. | Magnusson, Thor, author.

Title: Live coding : a users manual / Alan F. Blackwell, Emma Cocker, Geoff Cox, Alex McLean, and Thor Magnusson.

Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2022] | Series: Software studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022008717 (print) | LCCN 2022008718 (ebook) | ISBN 9780262544818 (paperback) | ISBN 9780262372626 (epub) | ISBN 9780262372633 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Computer programmingPhilosophy. | Agile software development. | Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) | AlgorithmsPsychological aspects.

Classification: LCC QA76.6 .B5794 2022 (print) | LCC QA76.6 (ebook) | DDC 005.1301dc23/eng/20220527

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022008717

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022008718

d_r0

The original handwritten slub Generative Manifesto

The TOPLAP logo created by Adrian Ward

Algorave logo designed by David Palmer, a spirangle based on the three-armed algorithmic structure of the Brigids cross

Rangga Aji

Rangga Aji

Alejandro Albornoz, a.k.a. co(n)de Zero, and Christian Oyarzn

Alejandro Albornoz, a.k.a. co(n)de Zero

ALGOBABEZ (Shelly Knotts and Joanne Armitage)

Rafeale Andrade

Rafeale Andrade

Jack Armitage

Computer artwork by Diego Moreira Guimares

Pietro Bapthysthe (Diego Duko and Berin)

Lina Bautista performing as Linalab

Renick Bell

Renick Bell

Ashlae Blum(e)

Alexandra Cardenas

Lucy Cheesman

Screenshot of Joana Chicau live coding visuals in a web browser

Joana Chicau

Periodic table sequencer and IBM six qubit frontend in SuperCollider

Malitzin Cortes, Generative promenade or Nightmare catcher, Modern Art Museum, Mexico City, 2019

ACI Asia Culture Center. Foodhack 2019 ISEA Korea 2019

Mamady Diarra

Mamady Diarra

Live coding performance

Jason Freeman

Flor de Fuego

Flor de Fuego

Flor de Fuego

Sarah Groff Hennigh-Palermo

Haus ++

TidalCycles code

Timo Hoogland

Timo Hoogland

Miri Kaat

Livecoding jam with Abhinay Khoparzi, Akash Sharma, and Joshua Thomas

Workshop on the Marching JS livecoding platform

Four time-lapse examples of live coded graphics

Melody Loveless and Caitlin Cawley

Mynah Marie, a.k.a. Earth to Abigail

MicoRex

MicoRex

Live coding and using charts for computer-aided composition

Livecoded Splatter in Livecodelab

Altered live coded piece

Punctual live coding language

Jonathan Reus

Jonathan Reus

Chemical Algorave

Chemical Algorave

Top image: Annotations in Gibberwocky show waveforms that are periodically sampled to generate musical patterns. Bottom image: Multiple post-processing shaders stacked in Gibber to create an abstract form

Screenshot from live coding performance INVOCACIONES

Screenshot of live coding with TidalCycles and Hydra

Kate Sicchio

th4

Anne Veinberg and Felipe Ignacio Noriega

Rodrigo Velasco (yecto)

Elizabeth Wilson

Anna Xamb

Visualization of the eight-bit registers of a Z80 microchip as it performs simple calculations, demonstrating the relationship between computation and weaving

Melody Loveless performing as part of the New York DigiAna stream, September 12, 2020

Orca live coding environment

Keep Live Coding Live sticker

Software is deeply woven into contemporary lifeeconomically, culturally, creatively, politicallyin manners both obvious and nearly invisible. Yet while much is written about how software is used and the activities that it supports and shapes, thinking about software itself has remained largely technical for much of its history. Increasingly, however, artists, scientists, engineers, hackers, designers, and scholars in the humanities and social sciences are finding that for the questions they face, and the things they need to build, an expanded understanding of software is necessary. For such understanding they can call upon a strand of texts in the history of computing and new media, they can take part in the rich implicit culture of software, and they can also take part in the development of an emerging, fundamentally transdisciplinary, computational literacy. These provide the foundation for Software Studies.

Software Studies uses and develops cultural, theoretical, and practice-oriented approaches to make critical, historical, and experimental accounts of (and interventions via) the objects and processes of software. The field engages and contributes to the research of computer scientists, the work of software designers and engineers, and the creations of software artists. It tracks how software is substantially integrated into the processes of contemporary culture and society, reformulating processes, ideas, institutions, and cultural objects around their closeness to algorithmic and formal description and action. Software Studies proposes histories of computational cultures and works with the intellectual resources of computing to develop reflexive thinking about its entanglements and possibilities. It does this both in the scholarly modes of the humanities and social sciences and in the software creation/research modes of computer science, the arts, and design.