Code on Github

Performance Video:

Final Documentation Live Coding

In our group, Mike was in charge of the music, Ruiqi worked on the visuals, and Rebecca worked on both and also controlled the midi value, and the Ascii texts.

Visual

Personally, I’ve started thinking of Hydra more as a post-processing tool than a starting point for visuals. I’ve gotten a bit tired of its typical abstract look, but I still love how effortlessly it adds texture and glitchy effects to existing visuals. That’s why I chose to build the base of the visuals in Blender and TouchDesigner, then bring them into Hydra to add that extra edge.

As always, I’m drawn to a black, white, and red aesthetic—creepy and dark visuals are totally my thing. I pulled inspiration from a previous 3D animation I made, focusing on the human body, shape, and brain. In the beginning, I didn’t have a solid concept. I was just exploring faces, masks, bodies—seeing what looked “cool.” Then I started bringing some renders into Hydra and tried syncing up with what Mike was creating. We quickly realized that working separately made our pieces feel disconnected, so we adjusted things a bit to make the whole thing feel more cohesive.

At one point, I found myself overusing modulatePixelate() and colorama()—literally slapping them on everything. That’s when I knew I needed to change things up. So I went for Touch Designer and used instancing to build a rotating visual with a box, which gave the piece a nice shift in rhythm and form.

In the end, I’m proud of what I made. The visuals really reflect my style, and it felt great combining tools I’ve picked up along the way—it made me feel like a real multimedia artist. I’m also super thankful for my teammates. Everyone put in so much effort, and even though some issues popped up during the final performance, it didn’t really matter. We knew we had given it our all. Big love to the whole cyber brain scanners crew.

Here are some images and videos we made in Blender and TouchDesigner for the performance:

Audio

For the whole performance, we were trying to create upon several keywords: space, cyberpunk, and huge distortion. I drew inspiration from Chicago house music, glitch, and industrial music for how to make the sounds raw and wild, to correspond to the sketches for the visual.

At the early iterations of the performance, our theme was a space odyssey for cyborgs. So I thought a continuous beeping sound from a robot would fit in to start the performance. Though later we built something slightly different, we still agree this intro is effective in grasping the audience’s attention, so we chose to keep it.

For the build up, I really like the idea of using human voices to serve as a transition into the second part. And to echo with the theme, I picked a recording from crews on Discovery, a space shuttle orbiter with NASA on testing the communication system.

The aesthetic for the visual reminded me to keep the audio minimalistic. Instead of layering too many different tracks as the performance progressed, I used different variants of the main melody by adding effects like lpf, crush, and chop. The original sample for creating the main melody is a one-shot synth, and these effects helped make it sound intense, creepy and distorted.

In the second part, we wanted to make the audience feel hyped, so I focused more on the sound design for drums. The snare created a depth for the sound, and the clap can make the audience interact with us. And the glitch sample was adopted according to the pixel noise cross from the visual. 

It’s really amazing to see how we have evolved as a group since the very first drum circle project, and it is a pleasure to work together and exchange ideas to make everything better.

Communication with the audience

To do live coding as a performance, we decided to use some extra methods to communicate with the audience. Typically, in a performance, the performer might communicate with the audience directly via microphone, which might undermine the consistency of the audio we are creating. Live coders might also type something in comments, which takes advantage of the nature of live coding, but the comments might be too small compared to the visual effects, and it might be hard for the audience to notice them.

Finally, we came up with the idea of creating ASCII art. ASCII art has been a part of the coding community for a long time, especially when it comes to live coding. In one of the most well-known live coding platforms, Sonic Pi, users will encounter an ASCII art title of this software. We would like to hype up the audience by adding some ASCII art to our flok panel, which could also utilize the flok layout and let those who don’t read code pay attention to the code panel.

We really managed to hype up the audience and express our big thanks and love to the community that has been supporting us throughout this semester.

👽👽👽💻🧠❤❤❤

Reading Artist-Musicians, Musician-Artists made me think about how blurry the line between disciplines really is, and maybe always has been. Looking up Paul Klee’s work was also interesting as he literally structured his paintings like musical compositions. It reminded me of how we use TidalCycles and Hydra, where coding becomes a tool to create a hybrid performance, a balance between live, rhythmic, and visual elements. Also, the part about intensity over virtuosity also stood out. It made me think of how, in live coding, it’s not about being super polishedl it’s about being present and responsive. Mistakes, randomness, and improvisation are part of the experience, and sometimes even enhance it. Sometimes in Tidal, we throw in randomness just to see what the system gives back. That unpredictability feels exciting, like giving up some control and letting the tool collaborate with you. What I found especially interesting was how often artists, like Cornelia Schleime, shifted between disciplines because they had to, whether it was due to censorship, economics, or needing a new form to express something. It made me realize that interdisciplinary practice isn’t always just an aesthetic choice, it often carries a sense of urgency or necessity. Are labels like artist, musician, or performer even useful anymore? Or are they just there for institutions and funding applications? When we do live coding, these lines feel less and less relevant.

I think it’s interesting to see how the combination of art and sound has existed since very early times, even before the advent of live coding. It’s fascinating how people have integrated other disciplines into their own areas of interest. I remember watching a video about how sound can shape sand into different patterns. It feels like the idea of interdisciplinarity with sound has helped lay the foundation for experimentation, forming the initial steps toward sound visualization through sand.

As we move into the digital era, people now have access to tools that make it easy to create both art and sound compositions. This has blurred the line between musicians and artists in the digital world, as mentioned in the reading, opening up opportunities for new forms of sound and visuals that can complement each other. This kind of co-evolution between the senses powerfully represents the concept of “multidisciplinary” work, as fields with distinct terminology and skill sets begin to build on one another to elevate both art and music to new levels.

Synesthesia is very commonly seen in contemporary art and I think it plays an even bigger role in the context of live coding. In the narrative of the artist-musician/musician artist, being able to interact with one form of sense as an artist and another as a musician becomes particularly potent when the tools themselves facilitate this blend. 

Abstract motifs in music and visuals and especially the idea of counterpoint in visuals as well as musically is something that I would look into as a tool for expression, as artists sought a universal language beyond representation. Just as musical counterpoint involves the interplay of independent melodic lines, visual counterpoint can be looked at through the juxtaposition and interaction of distinct visual elements like colour, form, or rhythm within a composition like Hans Richter’s work. 

Programming personality that moved into music. This is something we see greatly in the live coding community, again going back to Orca and Devine Lu Linvega from earlier in the semester, we see a lot of individuals being really good programmers and creating tools that help them bring musical ideas and motifs they inherit. The ability as a programmer to be able to wield coding languages as instruments for their artistic voice have made these individuals really good musicians/performers too. So in a sense in the scope of live coding, it goes beyond just touching on the two disciplines but for one ability to really be able to nourish the other.

In the very wide scope of topics that the article covers, art as an expression and art as a tool for fun is explored. Like in Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) there is one section where the dance looks entirely performative, while this may be besides the point. I think its very cool to see the performative side of the English club scene, in the same way as there are youtube tutorials on how to dance at a rave.

The reading challenges the traditional separation between artistic disciplines by showing how deeply interconnected music and visual art have become, particularly through the lens of artist-musicians. What stood out to me was how necessity, personal affinity, and cultural shifts dissolve the boundary between “art” and “music” as fixed identities. It becomes clear that being an artist today often means being multidisciplinary by default — especially as digital tools and cultural platforms blur creative categories. The reflection this invites is that creativity is not just about mastering a medium, but about navigating between them. In many cases, the most radical or resonant work emerges not from staying in one lane, but from embracing the ambiguity and hybrid nature of contemporary artistic identity. It prompts a reevaluation of authorship, originality, and even professionalism — not as barriers to cross, but as areas to explore fluidly.

This made me reflect on my own creative practice and how naturally I’ve gravitated toward working across different mediums. It made me feel seen in the messiness of experimenting, switching roles, and being curious about tools outside my comfort zone. Especially in a time when digital platforms allow for cross-pollination so easily, it’s not about fitting into one box, but about finding the language that best expresses the idea — even if that means inventing new ones. This encourages me to embrace the in-between more fully, and see it not as indecision, but as potential.

This article made me rethink how I separate art and music. I always thought of painters and bands as two different worlds, but the text shows they have been mixing for more than a hundred years. I liked the story about Paul Klee using music ideas like “fugue” in his colors, and later how punk students turned art school energy into noisy songs. It feels honest when the authors say money often decides whether someone is called an “artist” or a “musician.” That line hit me, because labels still matter today even when people switch tools on the same laptop. The piece also reminded me that raw spirit can beat perfect skill; three punk chords can share a gallery wall with video art. After reading, I feel freer to blur my own projects instead of picking one box.

I was struck by the way the text traced the journey of creative individuals blending art and music across time. The portrait of Leonardo da Vinci as a pioneer of all-round artistic practice felt like a sturdy anchor for later movements that dissolved strict boundaries between fields. I found the chapter on abstraction as a means of communication especially moving since it showed how pioneers like Klee and Kandinsky drew on musical principles to shape visual work. Their view of composition as a polyphonic surface opened a new door to seeing pictures as dynamic arrangements of tone. I also appreciated the insights into how economic factors shape choices about identity. The idea that success can tilt someone toward calling themselves an artist or a musician felt candid and profound. This reading inspires me to question my own labels and to explore bringing multiple passions into my creative life, which I hope to incorporate in my final performance for this class.