What really stood out to me in this reading is the idea that feeling in music does not come from complexity, but from very small timing choices. Even in simple, repetitive patterns, musicians can express a lot just by playing slightly early or slightly late. Those tiny differences change how the music feels, even if the tempo stays the same.

The example of West African drumming and the backbeat helped make this clear. A drummer playing a snare just a little behind the beat can make the groove feel relaxed and grounded. It is not something you would notice on paper, but you feel it immediately when listening or moving to the music. That sense of “in the pocket” seems closely tied to the body and to playing with other people, not just keeping perfect time.

I also liked the idea that musical communication does not have to “say” anything specific. Meaning comes from interaction, from call and response, and from how musicians respond to each other in real time. Microtiming becomes a quiet way musicians communicate and stay connected, which helps explain why groove feels so human.

Reading the excerpts on live coding, I found a powerful bridge between the rigorous, serious engineering of my Computer Science major and the immersive worlds of music and the cosmos where I love to get lost. The text describes live coding as a way to unthink the engineering of a day job, transforming the act of programming from a routine task into an “adventure and exploration” that feels akin to traversing the universe. As a senior from Ghana minoring in Interactive Media, I am inspred by how this practice turns the laptop into a “universal instrument”, allowing me to meld my technical background with my creative passions in a conversational flow that is as expressive and boundless as the music I adore.

As a computer scientist, I’m most comfortable coding privately and presenting the finished product afterward. We’re trained to show our best selves—clean code, intentional outcomes, and working solutions. Live coding will challenge this trained instinct by making the process public, exposing not only what works but also mistakes, hesitation, and uncertainty.

Watching code evolve in real time turns programming into a way of thinking out loud rather than a finalized performance. The messiness becomes part of the work, making software feel alive and human.

I also wonder how much traditional music theory actually feeds into live coding. While theory may shape the structures in the background, live coding seems driven more by responsiveness and experimentation. It feels less about following musical rules and more about negotiating them in the moment. For me, music theory in live coding functions as something flexible—useful when needed, but never fixed—allowing spontaneity and interaction to take the lead.


Reading this article made me rethink what live coding truly is, since I’ve been seeing a lot of live coding performances but never really thought about that. I really like the idea that there is no definition to it, “Live coding is about people interacting with the world, and each other, in real time.” Although I found this explanation sort of general but it really showcases how much inclusivity and possibility live coding could potentially encompass. I also like the point the author made that live coding “asks questions about liveness”, prompting reflections on the fundamentals of computer culture and technology. For me it is just so breath-taking that we could use simply 1 line of code creating a particle system in hydra while it would take a century in p5, and the fact that live coding’s straightforward nature is making music and visual creating much easier than ever before. As for “showing the screen” during performances, at least from my own experience watching the showscases, the process of seeing the performer changing the code on the bigger screen as the visuals is a part of witnessing the magic happen and is exactly what truly make the whole thing “live”. 

Real time generation of code becomes part of an aesthetic sense, where it comes part of an improvisational performance like coming up with a plot, a movement or a piece of music on the spot in more theatrical improv senses. Our code replaces the bodies used in performance, and to me it feels like a constant reminder of the creator’s existence.

I find it so interesting how the author says that “coding and everyday life are drawn together in ways that become imperceptible”. When I’m using technology devices, I find myself judging whether a software is user friendly by evaluating it with how much technical graphic exposure the graphic designer utilizes, and I tend to consider user-interfaces that contains code as a form of revealing the “backstage of a performance” like an error that is not supposed to appear. 

The revealing of the code thus brings a sense of disfamiliarity that tears down the whole illusion of a stage setting and reveals that it’s a show and that’s how we get it to work. Live coding becomes such a fun and pure act that doesn’t serve a commercial purpose like the big tech. It’s like showing the camera man and the whole tech crew behind a film. 

Yet, one more thing that struck me is the “improvise” aspect of live coding, and the spontaneity of it.  “A live coding musician is like an improvising composer, able to transform the whole structure of the piece with a few keystrokes.” And YESS, I find this so cool that the computer programs that I’ve learned to be “dull and systematic” can be transformed into an instrument with no predictive behavior where our emotions and impulses can have full control of it. We’re allowed to be present through our computer and live and feel something real with it.  

Exciting!

One key thing that stood out to me from this reading was where it said that live coding could be best characterized as “thinking in public”. I believe this is something that is lacking from majority of types of musical performances. You see an orchestra on stage, the thinking they’re doing is practically just following along with the music that they have practiced for months. Seeing a DJ on stage, they are playing pre-existing songs, and even when they are doing something live, you have no idea what they are doing. Live coding on the other hand shows everyone in the audience what you are doing, changing the code with the visuals and sounds reflecting it. Your thought process is being shown to the audience through your code, and that’s what makes it unique and different. Through live coding, you are embracing the fact that your computer is being utilized, instead of it being an invisible tool.

this was a great reading, and captured precisely why I am grateful I majored in this hodgepodge field despite kind of sucking. I read a book about mycelium-inspired-anarchy a little over a year ago, and a lot of the aspirations expressed in this reading echoed it. Through live coding, we can discover what we should cherish and encourage within ourselves and among each other. For example, this resistance towards being defined, of having to be boxed in. Running away from the idea that you have to know or control something to love it. It is possible to love even if you can’t do both those things, which is fearlessness I guess. Unashamed love. I am still trying to get around to this idea regarding this major, and actually, probably regarding everything, now. I’ve been getting into rituals and these sorts of things, but I acknowledge that live coding can be another practice in order to lean into that way of embodied living. It actually is probably a good thing for me to do, which is why I took this class. Get more comfortable opening up in the world, real time! Literally real time. I’m a reader, and I think this always gave me a sense of safety and distance. I liked processing and analyzing things from afar, and pressure is probably one of the scariest things to me. So truly, this idea of REAL TIME. We’re all here right now. I’m 22, and I never expected to get this far, and the fact that I’m 22 and still required to figure it out as I go is insane to me. Like, I can never quite wrap my head around the absurdity of it. It’s all really real-time. How does live coding open up? How do you open up? We’ll see, I guess.

I also really liked the idea of “thinking in public.” I am a bit ashamed to admit that I have incel-tendencies. But people are not something you should be afraid of. I think I learned this because of the times I am in, but this idea of thinking in public really resonated with me. Like it’s no big deal. In fact, being around people is magic, and leads to magical times. Sweat and breath in a dance room, you know?

Something else that hit was this quote: “This way of computing . . . helps me ‘unthink’ the engineering I do as my day job. It allows for a relationship with computers where they are more like plants, rewarding cultivation and experimentation.” I think, in the modern world, and for a lot of human history, we maintain the relationships that we are required to to survive, but we also know there is a better way of being in the world that feels like beauty, feels lighter, and feels true. Live coding is a way to be that way, I understand. Sort of a release, something you GET TO DO rather than something YOU HAVE TO DO.

I also really liked the idea of presenting “familiar things in a strange way.” I think a lot of things look dead to us and we have to shake things up to recognize them as alive. It goes hand in hand with this idea: “This is a problem for her (and us) inasmuch as Big Tech wants computers to be invisible so our experience of using them becomes seemingly natural.” I like minimalism, but it is also a trap of invisibility and complacency. A really well-designed snare. So keeping things strange and LOUD and VISIBLE appeals to me. And the point of all this is, exactly as was written here: “The capacity of live coding for making visible counters the smart paradigm in which coding and everyday life are drawn together in ways that become imperceptible. The invisibility here operates like ideology, where lived experience appears increasingly programmed, and we hardly notice how ideology is working on us, if we follow this logic, then we do not use computers; they use us.” How do you learn to SEE what can’t be seen? How do you learn to acknowledge that it takes two to tango and it’s not just you running things? I think live coding makes you sharper, or rounds out the depth in the back of your eyes. There’s this great Susanne Sundfor quote: “We don’t do life. Life does us.” And yep, just about. I don’t believe it in my bones yet. Another reason why I took this class.

And the last thing I want to write is that the nature of computers is soooo hyper hyper intimate. It’s like your pet dog except that dog is a mirror and a portal to any world you want to go to. A magical object! The art that has come out of computers consequently has this…feel. It feels kind of windy and spicy, and like an igloo. But then bringing that hyper super intimacy into a public space…? It’s kind of like you’re opening up that intimacy to everyone. It’s safe vulnerability. So wow.