How different would the live coding experience be without the act of coding itself being projected onto the screen? I think with the invention of speakers and video recordings, a lot of experiences are diminished if it’s not performed in real-time as the audience would feel that they can get the same experience at home by watching a video. There have been incidents of concert-goers booing at the performers when they find out that the singer was lip-syncing the whole time. Does it really matter if they were lip-syncing or not? Either way, the same sound comes out of the speakers, but yet it matters a lot to an audience to know that the sound waves coming out of the speakers was produced right here, right now, and not recorded in a studio a few months ago, even if the recorded performance can be edited and rerecorded to be a much superior version to any live performance.

It is the act of a performance being performed in real-time, knowing the possibility of the performers messing up, and yet delivering beyond expectation to woo the crowd. An orchestra occupied by a speaker for each instrument. An algorave performance that’s just a prerecorded video. Though functionally they are the same, the feeling is not,, and the act of showing the code in live coding elevates it from a video to a performance.