This reading was my first time encountering the idea of Shamanism. Before reading ahead, I googled the definition, and it said the practitioner in this religious practice, the Shaman, enters a trance-like state to interact with the spirit world. I immediately went into the reading with the idea that this would correspond to live coding in the sense that our work is supposed us and the audience into ‘another dimension’. In the reading, there was also a lot of mention of the idea of consciousness, and Pauline Oliveros says, “This altered state of consciousness in performance is exhilarating and inspiring.” She also says, “The music comes through as if I have nothing to do with it but allow it to emerge through my instrument and voice.” I singled out these two quotes from the reading cause I found them to be one of the only ones I could relate to live coding. I may be misinterpreting what she means, but the way I took it was that as we perform in live coding, especially as we improvise, we reach this state in our minds where we are essentially having an adrenaline rush, you’re not sure what will work, how this might mess with your pre-existing sound and visuals but there’s a beauty in experiencing that along the audience. You’re in charge of putting your audience in a trance.
I feel like this reading put me in some sort of live coding crisis because I genuinely couldn’t pick which side I’m with more. I do my demos with Deadmau5 logic in mind, reliability over improvisation, but that doesn’t mean I actually agree with it. I think I just do it because it’s safe. But then that makes me feel like am I even really ‘live’ coding when I do that?
When we were doing the jam session in class, it felt completely different. A lot more improvisation was happening. I was very intimidated at first, but then I started playing around with Tidal. Worst case, you just mute the sound and move on. That felt way more ‘live’ to me. I’d much rather if I were the audience watch someone improvise rather than watch someone take the predictable route.
However, as the performer, I think I’m kind of stuck between both. I default to safe and reliable when I’m on my own, but I actually enjoy the improvisation side more when I put my nerves aside.