Live Coding Blog

In what sense is live coding “live”? Live coding is live in that it is an active conversation between the coder, the machine, the audience, and everything else that surrounds and permeates the setting at hand; live coding is live in that it proceeds in a constant state of spontaneity and is characterized by its resistance to being defined and boxed. Live coding is an amorphous creature, very much alive in that it is never stagnant and craves change. It materializes not just as lines of code or musical notes; live coding is a representation of the relationships that manifest between everything that is present and around the performance itself.

As described in the excerpt, live coding by nature resists a singular definition—and in turn, a singular liveness. It thus demands a nuanced understanding that takes an array of perspectives into account: “The interdisciplinary nature of live coding . . . requires that its very liveness be understood from more than one epistemological and ontological perspective” (159). Live coding is unique in that it transcends spatiotemporal conventions. A performance may exist and be experienced in the present, but certain sequences and samples may be prescripted and prerecorded. Then there is the concept of the undetermined future, which live coding embraces in all its uncertainty. Live coding also creates a platform upon which the physical and digital coexist; it lives in the in-between. 

What emerges from a live coding performance is vastly different for each individual that experiences it, whether they be the live coder on the stage or a member of the audience. Live coding is thus an indeterminate manticore that assumes a different form to all and can only be defined through this ambiguity. Live coding is alive, thriving and pulsating in the bricolage of the predetermined and the yet-unborn.

The underlining of the various intersectionalities that live coding exists between, by performance scholars Matthew Reason and Anja Mølle Lindelof, helped me internalize the multiplicities inherent in this medium we have been practicing. Reason and Lindelof bring up live coding’s position between music studies and media studies, and extend this into the various definitions of the word “live” in this field. They note how music studies views liveness in terms of recording while media studies views it with a focus on transmission. Hence, the exploration of “liveness” that we have been doing over this semester is a nascent concept, with spontaneity, improvisation and performance elements borrowed from multiple disciplines.

The paper later on highlights the somatic and corporeal nature of live coding as well. Viewing our performances from a kinaesthetic lens, the author highlights our physical interaction with the machine:  “a sensorimotor movement vocabulary of micro adjustments, changes, and shifts performed in the frantic keystrokes, in the shuttling of the cursor around the screen, in the flash points of activation and execution”. This brought me back to our discussions regarding adding a performance element to our final showcase. While certain traditional instruments, like a piano or violin, lend a formality to music performances akin to an orchestra, live coding can be seen in the same paradigm as DJing perhaps. Many DJs construct a performance element around otherwise kinesthetically simple action,  like pushing faders and turning knobs, successfully transforming what would be a mundane performance into stadium-selling events.

In the chapter on Live Coding’s Liveness(es), the author discusses the concept that “for some live coders, nothing is saved, recorded, or archived in support of future replaying: the performance both begins and ends with the blank screen/slate.” This idea prompted me to consider the role of archiving in live coding, especially given its spontaneous real-time and potentially ephemeral nature.

Recently, I came across an essay in the book “Electronic Superhighway: From Experiments in Art and Technology to Art after the Internet” that discussed Performative archiving. The author critiques the notion of ephemerality as an excuse for relinquishing control and suggests that “materiality” is a more fitting term, one that evolves over time and through performance. The essay also reflects on how materiality is represented in museums, particularly during the 1990s and 2000s, noting the practice of listing the materials used in net artworks on wall labels, treating digital materials as physical substances.

I found it fascinating that even something as live and real-time as live coding can evoke a sense of materiality. This prompted me to think about the complexities of defining and preserving works in digital realms or those of a performative nature. When we view live coding as an art form, can it truly be considered as such without being archived? Is it the very act of documenting it that solidifies its significance within the discourse?

It establishes a single, immutable ledger accessible to all participants, ensuring a consistent and auditable record whose transparency minimizes disputes and blockchain for payments enables efficient reconciliation. Enterprises can also take advantage of the enhanced security features inherent in blockchain, guarding against fraudulent activities that threaten the integrity of their financial data. Blockchain offers a novel method for charitable donations, promoting transparency, efficiency, and donor trust.

• Both are needed for a user to view their balance and send and receive crypto transactions.
• The initial setup costs, including hardware, software, and skilled personnel, can be substantial.
• Blockchain records and stores data on all manipulations across payment-related documents (invoices, receipts, bills of lading, letters of credit, etc.), including details on document creation, editing, viewing and sharing.
• I agree to the Privacy Policy and give my permission to process my personal data for the purposes specified in the Privacy Policy.
• The UK, aspiring to establish itself as a global cryptocurrency hub, successfully incorporated stablecoins into the country’s payments regulation in June 2023.
• More organizations are focusing on the utility of blockchain to accelerate their business processes, reduce the cost of payment processing, add more security layers, and tackle potential business risks.
• For example, Ripple, a blockchain payment company, has partnered with over financial institutions, including Santander and American Express, to facilitate faster and more secure cross-border transactions.

Advantages of Using Blockchain for Financial Transactions

A UK-based fintech startup Mercuryo has developed a blockchain payment processing solution that enables businesses and individuals to easily send and receive cross-border payments. The solution supports 50+ cryptocurrencies Non-fungible token and fiat currencies, offers fast processing of international payments, and facilitates traceability of cross-border payment transactions. It provides automated AML/KYC compliance checks and offers prebuilt APIs to integrate with the corporate clients’ systems.

Blockchain for payments: the market state for 2024

Circle Pay blockchain allows for the safe transfer of money between different individuals, currencies and countries. The Circle Pay function is available in over 30 countries and in U.S. dollars, euros and British pounds. Each money transfer or payment is encrypted on a blockchain to ensure a safe transaction. The Circle Pay app acts as a group messaging app with a payment feature integration, so. https://www.xcritical.com/ You can transfer money cross-border and cross-currency in between sending your friends selfies and memes.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)

However, traditional PvP systems are often plagued by inefficiencies, high costs, and settlement risks. Due to the anonymity of bitcoin transactions with the use of addresses, the number of payments is not exact and should be estimated from the type of transaction. We have assumed that any transaction outputs is a payment, apart from one output being the change of the transaction when there is at least 2 outputs.

Over 175 global payments companies leverage Fireblocks to scale their digital asset operations and quickly enter new markets. From payment orchestration and automated workflows to connecting with on- and off-ramps, Fireblocks delivers a unified digital asset payments solution across blockchains and geos. As mentioned, payment processing efficiency will face several challenges in the blockchain space. Blockchain integration with multiple chains, blockchain compliance, and scalability solutions are just a few of the hurdles to overcome. In the years ahead, digital wallets and payment gateways may increasingly offer “decentralized payments” that occur in the crypto-blockchain space. Already, consumers show an interest in peer-to-peer transactions via mobile devices like Zelle, Venmo, Cash App, and PayPal.

Furthermore, stablecoins can be obtained through bank transfers and used within blockchain ecosystems. Some blockchain projects and fintech companies also work on solutions to bridge the gap between traditional banking and blockchain, enabling direct transfers from bank accounts to blockchain wallets. Thus, while blockchain doesn’t accept bank transfers, these integrations allow seamless transitions between traditional and digital finance. Surely, the biggest slice of that blockchain revenue pie is driven by the hundreds of cryptocurrencies that form the crypto market. On the enterprise level, blockchain provides a robust solution for large-scale financial transactions.

Read on to learn about blockchain in payments and explore the potential benefits it provides. While blockchain technology for payments holds great promise for payments, it’s important to note that there are still challenges to overcome, such as scalability and regulatory considerations. This technology allows users to make anonymous payments and cross-border transfers between jurisdictions. Anonymity allows you to hide the direction of payment and its amount to avoid paying taxes. Crypto blockchain-based payments also provide an opportunity to overcome sanctions regimes.

Plus, blockchain payments aren’t only restricted to cryptocurrency transactions, meaning the technology can support payments from multiple currencies like U.S. dollars, Canadian dollars and more. More organizations are focusing on the utility of blockchain to accelerate their business processes, reduce the cost of payment processing, add more security layers, and tackle potential business risks. Both public-private concerns pay attention to decentralized as it can take their business growth to the mainstream. While implementing blockchain solutions, special attention needs to be given to the regulatory compliance required.

The nonce value is a field in the block header that is changeable, and its value incrementally increases with every mining attempt. If the resulting hash isn’t equal to or less than the target hash, a value of one is added to the nonce, a new hash is generated, and so on. The nonce rolls over about every 4.5 billion attempts (which takes less than one second) and uses another value called the extra nonce as an additional counter.

Consequently, this leaves no room for anyone to engage in corrupt practices or financial mismanagement without detection. Blockchain serves as the foundational technology in crypto payments, playing a vital role in maintaining transactional security and reliability. It applies cryptographic principles to authenticate transactions, embedding an additional layer of trust and integrity within digital payments.

Any attempt to alter a record would be immediately noticeable, safeguarding the data against tampering. Validation and confirmation involve all network nodes coming to a consensus on the transaction’s validity. After consensus is reached, the new block is added to the existing blockchain. Each block contains a unique cryptographic hash and the hash of the previous block, ensuring the chain’s integrity. PvP is crucial in reducing settlement risks, which can lead to significant financial losses and systemic failures.

With the expected growth of the global blockchain market from $27.84 billion in 2024 to $825.93 billion by 2032, the segment of blockchain-based cross-border payments is anticipated to show the corresponding increase. Veem uses blockchain technology to make payments faster and safer than ever before. Countless industries and multiple levels of business leverage blockchain to automate and optimize their processes and operations. GAO recommends Congress consider legislation for federal oversight of nonsecurity crypto asset spot markets and stablecoins.

Bits of data are stored in files known as blocks, and each network node has a replica of the entire database. Security is ensured since the majority of nodes will not accept a change if someone tries to edit or delete an entry in one copy of the ledger. This may not appear to be substantial because we already store lots of information and data.

These instant payment solutions aim to modernize the payment landscape and meet the evolving needs of customers in today’s digital economy. They are based on blockchain technology, a distributed database that records transactions. This makes blockchain payments more secure and transparent than traditional payment methods. Blockchain-based payment solutions can be integrated into point-of-sale systems, allowing merchants to accept cryptocurrency payments directly from customers. Cross-border payment transactions are submitted by the blockchain network members or automatically enforced by smart contracts upon predefined events.

Blockchain plays a significant role in transforming digital payments and financial services. By utilizing decentralized ledgers and smart contracts, blockchain reduces fraud, streamlines cross-border transactions, and enables financial inclusion. However, challenges like scalability and regulatory frameworks must be addressed for its widespread adoption and integration into the financial ecosystem. The future trends include the tokenization of real-world assets and the emergence of CBDC projects across central banks.

Video Demo

Sound Composition

Both sound and visual design were built around the main idea of our project — a horror-esque live coding performance. It was definitely unconventional for live coding performances, but for some reason the idea stuck as our group was super excited about audience reactions moreso than the performance itself.

We borrowed many sound elements from horror movie soundtracks — ambient noises, ominous drums, and banging doors. The performance starts with some ambient noise (‘ab’ sound played with a tweaked class example), thumping sounds (jvbass) and crows (crows) chirping at the background. We transition to a few different main ‘melodies’, a haunting vibraphone sound (supervibe), footsteps (a custom sample) and a few other sound samples that sounded unnerving to us.

The buildup happens through the ‘footsteps’ custom sample we have. We speed up the footsteps as we fade out the sound elements to make it sound like someone is running away from something. At it’s peak, we transition to the jumpscare, before fading to a scene thats reminiscent of TV static. The sound for the TV static scene is our interpretation of TV white noise through TidalCycles, and we made good use of the long sample examples that were provided to us in class.
d2 $ jux rev $ slow 8 $ striateBy 32 (1/4) $ s "sheffield" #begin 0.1 # end 0.3 # lpf 12000 # room 0.2 # cut 1;

Visual Composition

The visuals are based off an image of a hallway with a door at the end. The main idea behind it was to zoom in towards the door as the jumpscare approaches. We intensified the image with Hydra by adding dark spots, saturating the image, and creating a flickering effect as the performance progressed. At the end, we end with a shot of a zoomed in door before transitioning to the jumpscare.

Getting the jumpscare video to work ( please don’t visit the video.src unprepared ) took us a surprising amount of time, as we were struggling to find a place to upload the video. Uploading the video on Google Drive didn’t seem to work because of some CORs errors, and uploading to YouTube didn’t work either. We finally found a host that worked which was imgur.

var video = document.createElement('video');
video.loop = false video.crossOrigin = "anonymous";
video.autoplay = true;
video.src = 'https://i.imgur.com/uFj91DQ.mp4';
video.oncanplaythrough = function() {
s0.init({ src: video, dynamic: true });
src(s0).out()
}

After the jumpscare, we transition to TV static which reminded us of what you might see after being caught by a monster in a video game or what you would see on TV.

Work Division

Jun and Aadhar primarily worked on TidalCycles while Maya worked on Hydra, which was the same arrangement we had as the first drum circle project last week. However, we found ourselves giving a lot more feedback to each other on each part of the project instead of isolating our parts we were working on, and we think that helped create a more cohesive project. A big part of our project was repeatedly practicing and coordinating our synchronous changes for the jumpscare, as TidalCycles needed to trigger the jumpscare sound while in Hydra you would need to trigger the jumpscare video which needed to happen at the same time for the performance to feel coherent. We decided to use the ‘scale’ of Hydra as an internal indicator among ourselves to signal when we needed to get ready to trigger the jumpscare. When the scale of the room reaches [32], both parts of the performance would trigger the jumpscare sequence.

Hydra (Nicholas):

We decided to give our drum circle project a floaty underwater-esque energy. When messing around with video inputs, I found a GIF of jellyfish swimming in the Hydra docs as a starting point.

One of the main things I hated about this GIF was the fact that it didn’t create a perfect loop. Having it as the focal point of the visual part of the performance didn’t look good. As a result, I decided to put it in a wave of color derived from an oscillator with many types of modulation applied.

Having the colors come over the screen in a wave allowed for the looping to be more seamless and created the opportunity for us to add something in the background. Buzz Lightyear was the perfect candidate for this because of this perfectly looping, ominous, and a bit funny GIF.

Placing the sad Buzz Lightyear GIF below the flood of colors adds to Buzz’s expression of hopelessness. I found this a bit funny, and by effectively combining 2 different sources to manipulate, I think it logistically also gave more opportunities to mess around with and improvise during the performance.

Tidalcycles (Ian, Chenxuan, Bato):

Rather than splitting our roles into strict parts, we decided to freely work on the audio together and see what came out of it. This unrestrained kind of jamming had yielded satisfactory results for our previous meetings, and we thought it would be best to run with what had been effective for us. That’s the spirit of live coding, after all—spontaneous inspiration!

We started by laying out a simple combination of chords alternating between two patterns using the supersaw synth, which sounded quite airy and gave off house music vibes. Ian added a nice panning effect to it, which gave it a sense of dimension and made it sound more dynamic. On top of this, we added a catchy melody that fit with the chords using the “arpy” sample, which was then made glitchy with the jux (striate) function.

We also experimented with a few drum/bass patterns that went along with the melodies. An attempt that went particularly well saw us pair the “drum” samples with a random number generator AND a low pass filter with a sine oscillator. This combination allowed for a lot of constant variation in both the literal and spatial sound for the drums, which kept things adequately erratic and exciting.

We tried to match the atmosphere of the audio with the visuals. This meant that we chose instruments that fit a more floaty-ish vibe—the supersaw synth was a surprisingly decent choice—and gave it more of that underwater feel by adding some reverb (the “room” effect) and audial dimension (the “pan” effect). The drum line with the oscillating lpf values also lent the overall audio a fluid, mesmerizing quality that we felt went along with the aquatic theme.

SOUND COMPOSITION

For the sound composition, we used the chopped sample from Magnetic-ILLIT as the main reference. Inspired by the arpeggio in its intro, we chopped off different parts of this sample to create a new composition with original rhythms. The music first starts by reverbed the piano sound, using TidalCycle functions like jux rev and off, and slowly builds up by adding elements like drums and hi-hats. The main melody is composed of different ‘beep’ sounds that were sliced from different parts of the arpeggio sample, thereby creating more glitchy aesthetics. We mostly focused on creating a combination of sounds that go well together by carefully curating different samples and trying different techniques to handle the long sample.

VISUALS COMPOSITION

For the visuals, we first started with an image, as we did for our first group project. We then worked on adding different effects that transformed our piece from a red building to a variety of different shapes and effects.

We ran into some struggles with the image loading, and thanks to Professor, we got this code, that helps load the image on the screen:

image = document.createElement('img')
image.crossOrigin = "anonymous"
image.src = "https://blog.livecoding.nyuadim.com/wp-content/uploads/photo-1711873317754-11f6de89f7ae-scaled.jpg"
loaded = () => {
   s0.init({ src: image })
   src(s0).out()
   console.log("Image loaded");
}
if (image.complete) {
   loaded()
} else {
   image.addEventListener('load', loaded)
}

Don’t forget to let flock load before running anything! >> You can check from the browser console.

We started by using .modulatePixelate(osc(10), 200).saturate(0)

Where the modulatePixelate showed interesting effects and the saturate(0) removes the colors which we reintroduce later with Colorama by choosing our colors and gradients that are different from the ones in the image. We also use mult and blend to add styles remove parts of the screen and change the effect, repeat for our main audio interaction between other effects.

We’ve played with gradually reducing the numbers in the pixelate function to simplify our visuals. Our plan is to incorporate it as the final function, making it easier for the next group to take over from us.

WORK DIVISION

The work was divided by nature into audio and visuals, when we first met, with Fatema and Marta working with visuals and Jeongin working with audio, we found that that’s where our interests lay and how it worked best for our group. Marta and I worked on different visuals and met to try various effects and see different possibilities for how we could develop different styles. Then we worked with Jeongin to align our effects, adding different interactions, and ccv audio effects to align the visuals with the audio and form a set style for our live-coding piece.