Alex McLean

Not to be confused with Alec McLean.

Alex McLean
The subject if the article, Alexander McLean is standing in front of a white brick wall. He is wearing a white shirt with a number sequence on it and is looking at a roll of grey tape in his hands.
Born1975 (age 48–49)
NationalityBritish
Other namesYaxu [1]
Occupation(s)Musician, Researcher [2]
Known forLive coding, TidalCycles, TOPLAP, Algorave

Alex McLean (born 1975) is a British musician and researcher. He is notable for his key role in developing live coding as a musical practice, [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9][10][11][12][13][excessive citations] including for creating TidalCycles, a live-coding environment[14] that allows programmer musicians to code simply and quickly,[10] and for coining the term Algorave with Nick Collins.[9]

He is an active and influential member of the live coding community; he is a co-founder of TOPLAP[15] and joint leader of the Live Coding Research Network.[16] Alex is co-founder of the Chordpunch record label[17]

McLean is also known for his work in software art, winning the Transmediale award for software art in 2002 for forkbomb.pl,[18] a short Perl script which creates a unique image from an operating system under heavy load,[19][20][21] and co-founding the runme.org software art repository with Olga Goriunova, Amy Alexander and Alexei Shulgin in 2003, which received an honorary mention in the Prix Ars Electronica netvision category in 2004.

Alex McLean performs as a solo artist under the moniker Yaxu and is also a member of the live coding bands Slub[22] and Canute. He has also collaborated with Kate Sicchio in combining live coding and live choreography.[23]

During 2016, McLean was sound artist in residence at the Open Data Institute, as part of the Sound and Music embedded programme.[24]

  1. ^ "Interview with Alex McLean". Retrieved 7 January 2024.
  2. ^ "Then Try This - Alex McLean". Retrieved 7 January 2024.
  3. ^ Muggs, Joe. "Algoraving: Dancing to Live Coding". Red Bull Music Academy. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  4. ^ Perry, Grayson. "Is the world wide web art's final frontier?". The Times. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  5. ^ Welleman, Vincent (19 May 2010). "SLUB-trio Muziek moet het visuele volgen, niet omgekeerd". Kwadratuur. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  6. ^ Temkin, Daniel. "Interview with Alex McLean". Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  7. ^ Fortune, Stephen (14 May 2013). "What on earth is livecoding?". Dazed Digital.
  8. ^ "Algorave: dansen op software". NOS. 29 November 2013. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  9. ^ a b Cheshire, Tom (29 August 2013). "Hacking meets clubbing with the 'algorave'". Wired. Retrieved 29 August 2013.
  10. ^ a b Bell, Sarah. "Live Coding Brings Programming to Life – an interview with Alex McLean". British Science Association. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  11. ^ "Hacking + Clubbing = Algoraves!". ARTE. Archived from the original on 3 February 2016. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  12. ^ Andrews, Robert. "Real DJs Code Live". Wired. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  13. ^ Collins, N.; McLean, A.; Rohrhuber, J. & Ward, A. (2004). "Live coding in laptop performance". Organised Sound. Cambridge University Press (3): 321–330. doi:10.1017/S135577180300030X. S2CID 56413136.
  14. ^ McLean, Alex. "Tidal – Pattern Language for Live Coding of Music". Sound and Music Computing. Archived from the original on 15 October 2017. Retrieved 22 May 2015.
  15. ^ "Toplap Credits". Sound and Music Computing. Archived from the original on 15 October 2017. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  16. ^ "International Conference on Live Coding - Home". Iclc.toplap.org. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
  17. ^ "Hacking + Clubbing = Algoraves!". Archived from the original on 3 February 2016. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  18. ^ Gere, Charlie (7 August 2012). Community Without Community in Digital Culture. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137026675.
  19. ^ Mackenzie, Adrian (1 January 2006). Cutting Code: Software and Sociality. Peter Lang. ISBN 9780820478234.
  20. ^ Bentkowska-Kafel, Anna; Cashen, Trish; Gardiner, Hazel (1 January 2007). Futures Past: Thirty Years of Arts Computing. Intellect Books. ISBN 9781841501680.
  21. ^ Matthews, Graham; Goodman, Sam (31 May 2013). Violence and the Limits of Representation. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137296917.
  22. ^ Armitage, Tom. "Making music with live computer code". Wired UK. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  23. ^ Squires, Paul. "In conversation with Kate Sicchio and Alex McLean". Archived from the original on 1 February 2016. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  24. ^ "Alex McLean chosen as ODI's sound artist in residence". Soundandmusic.org. Retrieved 26 January 2016.