Abstract
This paper/demonstration explores relationships between code, notation including representation, visualisation and performance. Performative aspects of live coding activities are increasingly being investigated as the live coding movement continues to grow and develop. Although live instrumental performance is sometimes included as an accompaniment to live coding, it is often not a fully integrated part of the performance, relying on improvisation and/or basic indicative forms of notation with varying levels of sophistication and universality. Technologies are developing which enable the use of fully explicit music notations as well as more graphic ones, allowing more fully integrated systems of code in and as performance which can also include notations of arbitrary complexity. This itself allows the full skills of instrumental musicians to be utilised and synchronised in the process. This presentation/demonstration presents work and performances already undertaken with these technologies, including technologies for body sensing and data acquisition in the translation of the movements of dancers and musicians into synchronously performable notation, integrated by live and prepared coding. The author together with clarinetist Ian Mitchell present a short live performance utilising these techniques, discuss methods for the dissemination and interpretation of live generated notations and investigate how they take advantage of instrumental musicians’ training-related neuroplasticity skills.
Highlights
Live coding of live notations seeks to join together two disparate traditions, one new, one somewhat older
It is appropriate that the computer science term for the system in which the live coder evaluates code is normally ‘interpreter.’ (Magnusson 2011, p. 22)
Is it really accurate to compare the notation of code to music notation, or text for that matter? And what about the comparison of interpretation of code by a computer with a performer’s interpretation of notation?
Summary
Live coding of live notations seeks to join together two disparate traditions, one new, one somewhat older. This paper will review relevant aspects of music technology and notation, live coding, data projection and the computer interface before considering how joining these techniques and technologies might work as well as suggesting what the fruits of such a union might be. Magnusson (2011) relates live coding to traditional forms of composing and performing: The live coder is primarily a composer, writing a score for the computer to perform. It is appropriate that the computer science term for the system in which the live coder evaluates code is normally ‘interpreter.’ Is it really accurate to compare the notation of code to music notation, or text for that matter (see Section 3.1)? Is it really accurate to compare the notation of code to music notation, or text for that matter (see Section 3.1)? And what about the comparison of interpretation of code by a computer with a performer’s interpretation of notation?
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