It was fascinating to read about two artists who took polar opposite approaches to what it means to “live code” in terms of where the liveliness lies and what it means for something to count as “live coding.” I personally thought that I was more similar to Deadmau5 because like him, I like to have a structure/demo of what’s going to happen even if it’s not entirely concrete, especially because with the music part; this is because I think that unlike Hydra where there’s less stakes with improvising your visuals, your audio should have a build up and a storytelling aspect that’s clear to the audience. After all, it’s more prominent if your different audio aspects don’t harmonize.

“The liveness in live coding is fulfilled through a performer’s activity in generating the sound, rather than a performer’s presence as a figurehead in a spectacle.”

I thought the above quote was quite interesting, because it summed up the writer’s belief that the essence of live coding should be in the element of the performer actually performing and thinking at the spot on his composition, rather than the performer just hitting the play button, which is what Deadmau5’s performances are like according to the writer. This made me question my own self on how much I am exactly “live coding,” because although I’ve been tweaking things on the spot, I still had the majority of the code all planned out before my performances. Did this mean that I wasn’t fulfilling that “live” aspect of live coding, too?

Finally, the writer’s conclusion of how live coding is a practice that opens us up to the “unbounded exploration of the musical potential of materials” made me realize that one of the most important mindsets I should have in live coding is to not be afraid of making mistakes, which are bound to happen especially if I were to respect and follow the live coding’s liveness element and do more improvisation at the spot.