In the article we establish that a performance is a spectacle that either goes through “composition or facilitation” once live depending on the position an artist places themselves in the continuum between both. Placing live coding into this continuum poses some conceptual challenges, particularly in defining where liveness and instrumental agency truly reside in such performances. Live coding simultaneously embodies real-time composition while relying on pre-existing computational structures that we often practice and reference, which complicate a clear distinction between creation and execution. Reading the opposing perspectives about liveness and performer activity raised in the article further complicates this distinction, as it becomes unclear whether the value of a performance lies in visible real-time decision-making or in the premeditated design of a cohesive audiovisual experience. While the article had a clear preference, I do find myself wondering if one is more valuable than the other or if this hierarchy in itself is a product of traditional assumptions about what counts as an “authentic” performance and what doesn’t. The distinction to an extent feel less like a measure of artistic value and more like a reflection of audience expectations, where immediacy is equated with authenticity. I do agree though that revealing the process through the display of the code and the inner workings of the performance as it is being created does create a sort of connection with the audience even if they do not fully comprehend the technical language being displayed to them. This visibility reinforces the perception of real-time decision-making, aligning live coding more closely with traditional notions of liveness as active creation rather than mere execution.

To me the most interesting part of the text was the assertion that live coding is a more traditionally inclined musical performance mode than EDM/DJ-ing. I agree with the assessment that watching an artist write out lines of code on the screen is similar to watching a guitarists fingers glide on the fretboard or a pianists hands flourishing over the keys. A counter could be raised that the act of coding music is not as intuitively recognized as using traditional instruments. However, one must consider that novel instruments are always enigmatic when they’re introduced. In fact even instruments with long legacies like accordions, oboes, even pianos have mechanisms that are not understood by the lay person. So in a similar line of argument, one must treat the live coding GUI with similar grace. However, the author’s comparison of live coding to Derek Bailey’s improvisation on a physical instrument is a little misleading. Even though Live Coding environments are traditionally very experimental and pliable, it’s difficult to achieve true ‘freedom’ of expression. For example, Derek Bailey can very well start punching his guitar strings or cut them with a wire cutter to add unorthodox elements to his performance. But for in a live coding environment, there are still rules that have to be followed, functionality that is allowed and syntax that needs to be respected. In fact at one point the author says “live coding is, in other respects, not the “free” improvisation” referring to live coders “respecting the beat” or in other words following musical conventions. Still, I really enjoyed how the author takes the reader on this thoughtful investigation on how to exactly categorize live coding in the larger musical world and how big name artists fit into the world of live coding.

The most interesting move in this paper is that Parkinson and Bell refuse to make Deadmau5 the villain. They take his “we all hit play” blog post seriously as a philosophical position, and when you do that it actually gets complicated, because his argument is not obviously wrong. He is saying the compositional labor already happened in the studio, and the live show is something else, a collective ritual where the spectacle and the crowd are what constitute the “liveness.” The weird implication the paper sort of stumbles onto is that this puts Deadmau5 closer to Francisco Lopez, who performs in a pitch black room with zero performer visibility, than either of them would probably be comfortable admitting. Completely opposite aesthetics, same underlying logic: the music exists independent of real-time human gesture, so stop pretending otherwise.

What the paper is really asking, even if it dances around a clean answer, is what audiences are actually tracking when they call something “live.” Bailey’s answer is that the music is being made right now in response to this specific moment and you can feel that. Deadmau5’s answer is that the crowd energy and spectacle are real regardless of what the laptop is doing. Live coding tries to split the difference by projecting the screen, making the compositional labor visible in real time, which is genuinely strange when you think about it. You are watching someone think. The paper’s sharpest observation is actually about virtuosity and the body, that traditional instrumental skill is legible because audiences share a human body with performers and intuitively understand physical limits. That legibility simply does not exist for typing, and the paper admits it without fully resolving it, which I think is where the most honest and interesting tension in the whole argument lives.

What struck me reading this paper is that Deadmau5 might actually be the most honest person in the room. He looked at what electronic music performance structurally is, a technology of reproduction, and just said it plainly. Everyone else tends to perform spontaneity to some degree. Live coders project their screens and that gesture matters, but they are still building on pre-written libraries, familiar patterns, layers of abstraction they did not invent mid-set. The paper even admits that coding from scratch is an impossible ideal.

That is where things get interesting to me. Live coding is not trying to be Derek Bailey and deep down it knows it. A lot of live coders want the beat, want people dancing, want the same things Deadmau5 wants. The real difference is not some claim to purity but a willingness to keep the process visible and genuinely uncertain. Showing your screen is not proof that you escaped mediation. It is just an honest account of where the mediation is actually happening. And honestly that might be a more defensible and more interesting thing to offer than any romanticized idea of total freedom from the machine.

When coding live, I’ve always felt scared when writing code live. Partly because I am not really skilled and familiar with the code, but also it’s a sense of exposure that I felt greatly uneasy about. Through the reading tho, I’m struck by the sentence that says how the reveal of the immediacy of decision making makes the audience feel the liveliness of a music and the process of creation. Like how Bailey and Deadmau5 differentiate their view of what liveliness is, it occurs to me that “live” is not merely about being present, being there, but it’s the sense that something can go unexpected at any moment, and accidents can be further developed. 

Like what Bailey says, “[the] accidental can be exploited through the amount of control exercised over the instrument, from complete – producing exactly what the player dictates – to none at all – letting the instrument have its say” (italics our own) (Bailey 1993, 100). Instruments are treated as having an agency in the making of music, where we exploit the elements that are not predefined by us humans. This became paradoxical when it comes to computers, as computers themselves run in processors, code and each element follows the structure that is artificially defined, but it is the timely “unstructured” practices that brings it to life. The author says that live coding “allows for the demonstrations of instrumental virtuosity” by showing the screen, it erases the assumption we have of computers as everything is structured and hidden. 

Personally, I find it interesting to see the balance between the composition and the liveliness of live coding. As the author says that a live coding performance has set composition like a pre-performance that are used for compositional purposes. Yet, to avoid live coding becoming mediatized as simply a press of the play button, or control enter to run the code one by one like what I would do in the past, I realize the importance of being at the spot and allowing accidents to happen. Yet, to become a “skilled” live coder, the understanding of composition and familiarity is what needs to be further developed.