When we begin to think of the laptop as a musical instrument, similar to a guitar or piano, live coding takes on a more traditional musical meaning. In my own practice as a CS major, especially in this class, I often rely on pre-written scripts, making only small adjustments or sometimes simply running code and still considering it “live.” However, the paper challenges this assumption by emphasizing that liveness is not defined by the presence of a performer, but by real-time decision-making and compositional activity. This places practices like Deadmau5’s performance—where much is pre-structured—on a different end of the spectrum from live coding. Instead, live coding aligns more closely with improvisational traditions, such as those represented by Derek Bailey, where creation happens in the moment.
Now that we are required to do live coding sessions as a group, it pushes me away from heavy pre-planning and forces me to engage more directly with the code in real time with my group members. This shift makes the process feel much more aligned with the paper’s idea of liveness, allowing us to respond to each other and build something on the fly rather than relying on pre-written structures.