#240611: adela from scratch
⎋/~
More than a month ago Brin asked in the #toplapsi:kompot.si matrix room if someone would like to pair with them for the from-scratch session at Adela livecoding festival. They would do live visuals in hydra and someone would do the audio part. I raised the hand.
What are we talking about here? Livecoding? What is it? It's a performing arts form centered upon the writing of source code and use of interactive programming in an improvides way - often to create sound and image based digital media. It's most prevalent in computer music. Typically, the proces of writing source code is made visible by projecting the computer screen in the audience space. (more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_coding).
So, Adela is a Ljubljana festival of algorithmic art, which includes livecoding and, importantly, an 'from-scratch' session. These are some kind of on-the-fly performances which anyone can step up to do, like an open mic, but the time is limited - often to 9 minutes, after which audience MUST clap enthusiastically - especially for beginners mustering up their courage.
I first thought I would code in SuperCollider but then I thought that myself and Brin would practice in flok.cc - a wonderfull collaborative platform where multiple livecoders can join a room on the web and write code together, in one or multiple panels, in one or multiple programming languages. Flok doesn't support SuperCollider (for obvious technical reasons which I won't get into them here) but it supports Strudel - a web port of Tidal Cycles - a fast livecoding-focused language that uses mostly samples but increasingly also basic synthesis.
Of course working on a piece of looping algorithmic music for hours one can arrive at lovely results, but it also results of amount of code that is not realistic to write in under 10 minutes. Unless you are really fast typist (which I'm not), or you've practiced many days (which I didn't). So of course, I ran out of time on the live session. It was a really cool performance anyway, and running out of time is probably part of it, part of the glitching aspect, you know, embracing the error and so on...
However,...
In the days later and with experience still lingering I was playing further in Strudel and recorded a session just for The Backstairs Tone! I'm calling it "Prince Lucija's Chordarp Phases" and I managed to record it in under 7 minutes.
I'm enjoying this exploration of livecoding practice further, and I'm especially intrigued by some of the societal features of this movement, the so called toplap movement. But more about all that very very soon!
