After this reading, I am a little confused about what Live Coding is. It is definitely coding live in front of the audience – but my question is more about the approach regarding that. Do you practice your code thoroughly, memorize what each step is, remember what to do next, account for possible mishaps – just like one prepares for music, dance, or theatre performance? Practice and practice until you you can’t get it wrong? Or you practice different code combinations, try out your hands at different things, but then live code all of that improv? No set sequence, no idea of what you’ll do next but improvise based on the audience’s reactions.
The latter is more risk-taking and the former is risk-aversing. In the former approach, you practice and perfect everything and leave minimal things for chance. In this, the live-coding idea is a performance in front of an audience where you code ‘live’ (in real-time) and show them whatever you are coding. However, it is a rehearsed performance. In the second approach, you think about ideas there and then, make a sequence at the moment, you are unsure of the output and also have to think about how to reverse it if it doesn’t look as good. It is like a theatre improv performance.
The former approach was my interpretation of live coding and mostly what I presented for my first assignment. But, this reading makes me wonder otherwise. In multiple instances, I get a feeling that artists love to engage in live coding because they see spontaneity as a result of improvisation as a challenge. One of the subjects said that “[Live coding] allows for improvisation and spontaneity and discourages over-thinking.” And another one said, “The higher pace of live coding leads to more impulsive choices which keep things more interesting to create.” So is live coding supposed to be a spontaneous challenge, an improv? Can it not be a rehearsed performance? Does that take away from the creativity of the artist performing live?
In the article, the author uses this spontaneity and impulsiveness in live coding as a reason to justify how it allows creative minds to express their music. The author says, “Such riskier ways of making music are more likely to produce aberrant output, providing the opportunity to adjust your style through transformational creativity.” But my question is, is improvising live the only way to define creativity? Creativity is a broader topic. Sampling sequences of audio/music or video in a way to a tell story is also creativity. This creative piece can then be rehearsed and perfected to perform live in front of the audience. That does not make it less creative.
I then believe that both approaches are correct, or say, neither of them are incorrect. It depends on where you are at and how comfortable you are with live coding. If you are just starting out, you may want to rehearse everything beforehand, and that is absolutely alright. If you are experienced, you may want to improvise live and that challenge could be your performance. Whatever your approach may be, one should not be defined as more creative than the other or justified in that way.