Live coding

Not to be confused with Interactive programming.
A Study in Keith is a musical live coding performance in Impromptu by Andrew Sorensen.

Live coding,[1] sometimes referred to as on-the-fly programming,[2] just in time programming and conversational programming, makes programming an integral part of the running program.[3]

It is most prominent as a performing arts form and a creativity technique centred upon the writing of source code and the use of interactive programming in an improvised way. Live coding is often used to create sound and image based digital media, as well as light systems, improvised dance and poetry,[4][5] though is particularly prevalent in computer music usually as improvisation, although it could be combined with algorithmic composition.[6] Typically, the process of writing source code is made visible by projecting the computer screen in the audience space, with ways of visualising the code an area of active research.[7] Live coding techniques are also employed outside of performance, such as in producing sound for film[8] or audiovisual work for interactive art installations.[9] Also, the interconnection between computers makes possible to realize this practice networked in group.

The figure of live coder is who performs the act of live coding, usually "artists who want to learn to code, and coders who want to express themselves"[10] or in terms of Wang & Cook the "programmer/performer/composer".[2]

Live coding is also an increasingly popular technique in programming-related lectures and conference presentations, and has been described as a "best practice" for computer science lectures by Mark Guzdial.[11]

  1. ^ Collins, N., McLean, A., Rohrhuber, J. & Ward, A. (2003), "Live Coding in Laptop Performance", Organised Sound 8(3): 321–30. doi:10.1017/S135577180300030X
  2. ^ a b Wang G. & Cook P. (2004) "On-the-fly Programming: Using Code as an Expressive Musical Instrument", In Proceedings of the 2004 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) (New York: NIME, 2004).
  3. ^ Alan Blackwell, Alex McLean, James Noble, Jochen Otto, and Julian Rohrhuber, "Collaboration and learning through live coding (Dagstuhl Seminar 13382)", Dagstuhl Reports 3 (2014), no. 9, 130–168.
  4. ^ Magnusson, T. (2013). The Threnoscope. A Musical Work for Live Coding Performance. In Live 2013. First International Workshop on Live Programming.
  5. ^ "Tech Know: Programming, meet music". BBC News. 2009-08-28. Retrieved 2010-03-25.
  6. ^ Collins, N. (2003) "Generative Music and Laptop Performance Archived 2014-05-14 at the Wayback Machine", Contemporary Music Review 22(4):67–79.
  7. ^ McLean, A., Griffiths, D., Collins, N., and Wiggins, G. (2010). Visualisation of live code. In Electronic Visualisation and the Arts London 2010.
  8. ^ Rohrhuber, Julian (2008). Artificial, Natural, Historical in Transdisciplinary Digital Art. Sound, Vision and the New Screen (PDF). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. pp. 60–70.
  9. ^ "Communion by Universal Everything and Field.io: interview". Retrieved 5 February 2013.
  10. ^ Bell, Sarah. "Live coding brings programming to life - an interview with Alex McLean". Retrieved 2 March 2016.
  11. ^ Guzdial, Mark (August 2011). "What students get wrong when building computational physics models in Python: Cabellero thesis part 2". Retrieved 5 February 2013.