Text for Antti:

Live coding is a new direction in electronic music and video: live coders expose and rewire the innards of software while it generates improvised music and/or visuals. All code manipulation is projected for your pleasure. “Live coding is not about tools. Algorithms are thoughts. Chainsaws are tools. That's why algorithms are sometimes harder to notice than chainsaws.” - TOPLAP Draft Manifesto “Turn up to your local pub these days, and you might find more than a quiz or a karaoke going on. This is a livecoding performance - whatever that means…” - BBC news reporter.

Image for Antti:

Dave's stuff:

• TOPLAP manifesto and short history of livecoding
• Show some Andrew Sorenson/Gabor Papp videos
• Fluxus tree demo
  • Code overlay
  • Game engine (used for games/installations/performances)
  • Text based livecoding
• Schemebricks demo
  • Visual scheme programming
  • Audio code
  • Synth stuff
• Betablocker DS demo
  • Games interfaces
  • Made up languages (esolangs)
  • Homebrew as tech recycling

Till's stuff:

• SuperCollider
  • as a livecoding environment
  • JITLib Demo (Ndef, Tdef, etc.)
• BetaBlocker UGens and how to get there

• Title: BetaBlocker – further adventures in live coding
• Authors: Till Bovermann [1], Dave Griffiths [2]
• Affilitations: [1] Media Lab, Department of Media, School of Art and Design, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland [2] FoAM

In this talk, we want to tell a story about how SuperCollider provided an environment for investigation, starting its journey in live coding and ending up in making computing tangible.

It is a case study, Dave vs. Till, of the invention, creation, and adaptation of a fictional CPU with 256 bytes of memory. Beginning as an implementation in scheme on Fluxus, to running as homebrew software on a Nintendo DS, it was reborn recently as a demand-rate UGen in the world of scsynth, featuring a high-level control mechanism written in SuperCollider language. In its various incarnations, it is a substantial part of several diverse projects such as a live coding environment with which one is able to perform while being drunk, and a research tool for the investigation into the materiality of digital media. Dave uses it to slow down the process of computation for live coding malleability while Till speeds it up to the Nyquist frequency to explore algorithms tangibly and hear their execution.

We will tell the story of BetaBlocker featuring it as all an artistic project, an addition to scsynth as an interpreted language, and a technical as well as mental challenge. Its tale will be accompanied by quite some sound and noisy code examples.

We plan to have an accompanying, toplap-compliant, live coding performance, which is handed in separately to the category “musical/sound work”.

• Title: BetaBlocker – meta-coding for the rest of us
• Authors: Dave Griffiths [2], Till Bovermann [1]
• Affilitations: [1] Media Lab, Department of Media, School of Art and Design, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland [2] FoAM

A meta live coding performance, toplap-compliant, with BetaBlocker in its various incarnations. BetaBlocker is a fictional CPU with 256 bytes of memory, running as homebrew software on a Nintendo DS and as demand-rate UGens on scsynth. Rocking the ambience with our BetaBlocker engines, there is also some genetic programming involved where we will optimise the fitness function as part of the performance, as well as SuperCollider, a Nintendo DS, and a serious sound system.

We plan to give a talk on the tale of BetaBlocker, which is handed in separately to the category “talks”.