Category: Spring 26

When the reading discussed the two very distinct views of Bailey and Deadmau5 on live performance, it made me realize that throughout this course I have been changing from Deadmau5’s approach to Bailey’s. I am not sure if this change comes from my major in computer science or my previous experience with coding, where I would always have a clear idea of what my code should do and expect it to follow a rigid structure of input and output even before writing it. I brought that same mentality into this class, where I had very specific ideas and a structured vision of how my sounds should be. This is very much how Deadmau5 approaches live performance. Sometimes, it made me frustrated that Hydra visuals turned out differently from what I had planned in my head, but looking unexpectedly cool, where even small changes created something interesting. The same applies to audio. Because of this, I have started to loosen up my approach in both solo coding practices and group work these days. Instead of always starting with a fixed idea, I now allow myself to write a few lines, observe what happens, and then experiment further to see if I like the result. I believe this has made me more like a Bailey-style live performer.

I also really like how the reading defines “liveness.” It says that computers are merely tools and do not inherently possess life or liveliness. Instead, true liveness comes from the “performer’s active role in generating sound, rather than their presence as a figurehead in a spectacle.” I believe that whether a performance is prerecorded or not, the real value of calling something “live coding” lies in allowing the audience to see the performer’s real-time interaction and decision-making through code, and how they engage with the computer in the moment. In that sense, I can still see the value in Deadmau5’s performances, where elements are pre-produced. However, I see more greater value in real-time exploration for being vulnerable, making mistakes, and creating something totally unexpected. Treating the instrument as a tool for discovery and valuing unpredictability is an approach I am now trying to adopt myself.

The tension between “liveness” and “showmanship” is at the heart of Parkinson and Bell’s exploration of the laptop as a musical instrument. The authors provide a framework for evaluating what actually constitutes a live performance by comparing Deadmau5’s “playback” philosophy and Derek Bailey’s “instant composition” idea. My experience in NIME classes suggests that there is often a desperate scramble to justify the laptop’s presence on stage by layering it with external sensors, elaborate costumes, and “performative” gestures that frequently have a tenuous relationship with the actual sound generation. This creates a “narrative flow” that feels artificial – a costume draped over a simple sensor to distract the audience from the fact that the performer is just interacting with a computer. Live coding, however, suggests that this physical theater is unnecessary. By following the TOPLAP manifesto to “show us your screens”, the live coder moves the visible intricacy from the performer’s body to the performer’s mind, rendered in real-time as logic and syntax.

This shift toward the laptop as a minimum medium aligns with Bailey’s concept of the “instrumental impulse”. Live coding embraces the computer’s inherent, unadulterated affordances: the keyboard, the mouse, and the code. Parkinson and Bell argue that the “natural resources” of the laptop are not found in how it can be made to mimic a guitar’s physicality, but in its capacity for algorithmic complexity and generative uncertainty. In this light, the laptop is a like sophisticated adding machine that becomes an instrument through the elegance of the code written in the moment. The “liveness” is found in the risk of the syntax error and the transparency of the thought process, rather than the sweat of a choreographed movement.

Ultimately, this reading suggests that live coding offers a more honest path for electronic music than the “spectacle” of EDM or the “gestural narrative” of some NIME practices. If, as Francisco Lopez suggests, electronic music doesn’t inherently need the “concert hall tradition” of physical gesture, then live coding creates a new kind of stage presence that is purely functional. It replaces the performer-as-figurehead with the performer-as-architect. This raises a critical question for our practice: if we strip away the costumes and the sensors to focus on the “minimum medium” of the screen, does the audience’s lack of “code literacy” turn our logic back into a mere visual spectacle? If the audience cannot read the “instrument” we are playing, are we simply trading one type of misunderstood narrative for another?

What does it mean for something to be live? And what does liveness mean to us? Why is it important to us? I didn’t exactly know what the author meant when they said “meditaization may in fact amplify perceptions of liveness.” Amplify how? In what way? Regardless, I started thinking about how mediatization has affected our perceptions of liveness. Can liveness mean more than “physical activity in the moment of performance”? I don’t think so. What that physicality looks and feels like is different when we’re using computers, which the reading also goes into, but I think our hypermediatized environment has made “true” liveness as the reading conveys it feel rarer, and has also made delivering liveness more challenging in some ways.

Access to compilations of the greatest live performances in recorded history are mere clicks away. A lot of people attend events wanting to feel how that video made them feel, which produces a manufactured sense of “liveness,” as if we’re attending this performance as a prepackaged experience, with certain expectations.

And the reading goes, that’s not really live then, is it. Or it’s on one end of the spectrum of liveness that we should move away from. Through this reading, I got the overall sense that liveness is important to us because it moves us in particular ways, and we want to feel moved in those ways. And it asks can live computer performances move us in those ways? And it can, but not when it’s played by Deadmau5, apparently.

I have to preface this by saying I have a negative bias towards EDM. Even as a kid, I hated the EDM-infused pop that was super popular during the early 2010s. Liveness means different things to different audiences depending on their expectations. I think most people who listen to Deadmau5 don’t expect more than the kind of live experience he delivers. (But maybe not, given how defensive he was.) At first, I thought saying he “facilitates spectacle” was harsh since he plays his own compositions – it’s more than mere spectacle. But as the reading went on, this description made sense. He deferred to the audience making the

Chasing simulacra.

There’s a reason Deadmau5 deferred to the audience instead of

said “You guys are what make this

“I wish I was there.”

This kind of liveness doesn’t appeal to me.

I understand why the reading said Deadmau5 “facilitated spectacle” because, like most EDM performances, people aren’t there for the musicality as much as they are there for the party.

I attended an EDM festival that had Calvin Harris.

basketball and the wondrous physicality

Because we have access to so much “live content” as well, it shapes our expectations, as in, we know what to expect. We’re able to access more behind-the-scenes stuff. I think watching a “live” performance of Deadmau5 on Youtube and in person is not that different.

live is something more divine, like we’re watching the gods open up and touch us right in front of us, right here, right now.

This reading offers two opposing views of what live performances mean: whether it is creating a spectacle or whether it is true improvisation and showcasing the artistic process. I believe that the utilization of our live coding software can greatly impact how it is seen in a performance. We how we have been doing where we just evaluate when we our performing, I think that would be more like what Deadmau5 says, where even if you are doing it live, you aren’t manipulating much and it is heavily rehearsed. If instead, we were to start from scratch with ideas in your head and performing by creating the visuals and beat from scratch as we performed, that would be like an improvisation. I don’ t think either way of performing is inherently wrong, just what you want to showcase with your performance, whether that be your creativity, or a perfected spectacle.

I think the Deadmau5 vs Bailey comparison is a really clever way to frame what live coding is. He is being honest about something that a lot of performers pretend is not happening, and I think there is something refreshing about that. For me the whole point of live coding is that something could go wrong, and that tension is what makes it feel alive. A perfectly pre planned show with synced lights and video is impressive in its own way but it does not give me that feeling.

The Bailey section hit different because I actually feel like that philosophy is closer to how I think about using Hydra and TidalCycles. I do not always know what a pattern is going to sound like or what a modulation value is going to do to a visual until I try it, and I think that exploratory quality is what makes it feel like playing an instrument rather than just operating software. I have had some of my best moments in live coding sessions when the code did something I did not expect and I just leaned into it instead of fixing it.