We know that live coding isn’t necessarily about the final result, but it’s a trial and error process, with a lot of experimentation and glitches. Some glitches end up making the work better, they can work like happy mistakes.

The idea of the black box being broken also applies to what we’re doing, while performing the code is being edited and evaluated in real-time and the audience is seeing exactly what the performer is, full transparency. So when a glitch happens (and perhaps throws an error), the performer may not be able to play it off as smoothly as they would be able to if a black box had been in place.

Given all this, I realize that I don’t let myself experiment with glitches, I usually play it safe in my demos, which while my final result may seem better to me, the reading made me acknowledge that I am probably limiting myself when I do that, and I can’t imagine its as fun for the audience to what me evaluate pre-written lines of code rather than watch me edit and figure out in real-time.