Los DJs están abandonando platos, vinilos y samples, los músicos olvidan sus instrumentos en las actuaciones en directo. Existe una nueva forma de crear una experiencia musical y visual en directo: Livecoding (dos ejemplos en YouTube). Los livecoders utilizan ordenadores y lenguajes de programación (Perl y otros diseñados específicamente para ese comentido) para crear composiciones sobre la marcha. En Wired News lo comentaron hace poco, Real DJs Code Live.
Entre las plataformas de software específicas domina el open source, y una de las más populares es ChucK, creado en el Sound lab de la Universidad de Princeton. Su proyecto On-the-fly Programming propone “Using Code as an Expressive Musical Instrument”:
what is it? : On-the-fly programming (or live coding) is a style of programming in which the programmer/performer/composer augments and modifies the program while it is running, without stopping or restarting, in order to assert expressive, programmable control for performance, composition, and experimentation at run-time. Because of the fundamental powers of programming languages, we believe the technical and aesthetic aspects of on-the-fly programming are worth exploring.
Los livecoders han creado un consorcio internacional denominado TOPLAP, un acrónimo de múltiples significados: Temporary | Transnational | Terrestrial | Transdimensional) Organisation for the (Promotion | Proliferation | Permanence | Purity) of Live (Algorithm | Audio | Art | Artistic) Programming. Esta es su declaración de intenciones o manifesto draft:
We demand:
- Give us access to the performer's mind, to the whole human instrument.
- Obscurantism is dangerous. Show us your screens.
- Programs are instruments that can change themselves
- The program is to be transcended - Artificial language is the way.
- Code should be seen as well as heard, underlying algorithms viewed as well as their visual outcome.
- Live coding is not about tools. Algorithms are thoughts. Chainsaws are tools. That's why algorithms are sometimes harder to notice than chainsaws.
We recognise continuums of interaction and profundity, but prefer:
- Insight into algorithms
- The skillful extemporisation of algorithm as an expressive/impressive display of mental dexterity
- No backup (minidisc, DVD, safety net computer)
We acknowledge that:
- It is not necessary for a lay audience to understand the code to appreciate it, much as it is not necessary to know how to play guitar in order to appreciate watching a guitar performance.
- Live coding may be accompanied by an impressive display of manual dexterity and the glorification of the typing interface.
- Performance involves continuums of interaction, covering perhaps the scope of controls with respect to the parameter space of the artwork, or gestural content, particularly directness of expressive detail. Whilst the traditional haptic rate timing deviations of expressivity in instrumental music are not approximated in code, why repeat the past? No doubt the writing of code and expression of thought will develop its own nuances and customs.
