# Coding Practice for Artists: What's your score?

Module Coding Practice for Artists, BA Art&Tech Y1 at Slade School of Fine Art UCLC, 2025

## Introduction

･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟﾟ･

Joana Chicau is a designer and researcher — with a background in dance. Chicau's research seeks to increase public understanding of computational processes through embodied and choreographic approaches. Her practice interweaves web programming with choreography — from the making of online platforms to performances and workshops.
She is a lecturer and PhD candidate at the Creative Institute at the University of the Arts London.

.･ﾟﾟ･[joanachicau.com](https://joanachicau.com/)
.･ﾟﾟ･[screenshots collection](https://www.are.na/joana-chicau/web-choreographies-other-stories)
.･ﾟﾟ･[performances' playlist](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkRYCVc1KXTUUq-eB3gcHacLoYmLEHUQs&si=XSc0C74YnCwKGnvm)


## Readings

⏰ 30 minutes

In groups, discuss the questions below, summarise and share:

* What is a score?
* What is live-coding?
* What connections can you make between the two practices?
* What insights have emerged for you from reading these texts?
* In what ways do the two texts relate to your current studies?
* How do these texts inform or challenge existing practices in your field of study?
* How do you think you can apply or relate the ideas and themes presented in the texts to your own artistic practice?

### Scores

<span style="color:blue; font-size:10pt">language | </span><span style="color:blue; font-size:10pt"> performance | </span><span style="color:blue; font-size:10pt"> rules | </span><span style="color:blue; font-size:10pt"> co-creation | </span><span style="color:blue; font-size:10pt"> repetition | </span>

Depending on the discipline, notation practices can take different forms:
> '...colloquial use for various note-making practices, to other forms of score, script, recipe, or diagrammatic map, to the development of a formalised notation system with its own clearly defined inner logic' (Blackwell,2022).

### ノ゛ Live Coding ゛

<span style="color:blue; font-size:10pt"> liveness |</span><span style="color:blue; font-size:10pt"> process | </span><span style="color:blue; font-size:10pt"> speech | </span><span style="color:blue; font-size:10pt">'show us your screen'</span>

> Live-coding performance is a practice within which computer code is written live (Blackwell et al, 2022) in front of an audience, making visible the algorithmic processes within the interface itself.

Live coding entails the modification of written symbols, such as part of a given programming language or part of a notation system.

## Context & Inspiration


Fig.1: Alison Knowles with Norman Kaplan, Poem Drop Event, May 1971, House of Dust, 1969–75. California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA. Photographer unknown. © Alison Knowles.

* “The House of Dust” (1968) a digital poem composed of four separate categories prepared by Knowles in advance and programmed in FORTRAN-IV by Tenney, which was then processed by a mainframe computer at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute (BPI). [Continue reading here](https://www.x-traonline.org/article/objectpoems-alison-knowless-feminist-architexure).
* [Watch: Alison Knowles Reads the House of Dust Poem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJe1kciX4ZQ)


Fig.2: 9 Evenings, Theatre & Engineering, 1966

> "9 Evenings was the first large-scale collaboration between artists and engineers and scientists. The two groups worked together for 10 months to develop technical equipment and systems that were used as an integral part of the artists’ performances." [Read more here](https://monoskop.org/9_Evenings:_Theatre_and_Engineering).
* [See program](https://www.fondation-langlois.org/9evenings/e/index.html)
* [Video trailler: 9 Evenings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-cgnK-kFoo)
* [Video: Open Score, 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, 1966, edited circa 1997](https://vimeo.com/107488380)


Fig.3: Computer dance notation for the three versions of 0=45. A solo dance created for a front vídeo câmera. The same dance positions computer output generated three versions. Analívia Cordeiro, 1973
> The Brazilian artist, choreographer and dancer has been exploring the relationship between body, movement, visual and audiovisual art and media art since the 1970s.
* [Analivia Cordeiro's website](https://www.analivia.com.br/computer-dance-3/)


Fig.4: A piece for drones and dancers, Phoenix articulates two realities, 2018
> "...at first playful, the drones on stage interact with three performers, creating an unsettling soundtrack as they approach and retreat from the microphone. Then we connect live via Skype with artists in Gaza who live with the constant threat and roar of drones".

* [ PHOENIX - Eric Minh Cuong Castaing / Shonen ](https://www.shonen.info/phoenix)

Fig.5: image from LAUREN by Lauren Lee McCarthy, 2017

> "I attempt to become a human version of Amazon Alexa, a smart home intelligence for people in their own homes. The performance lasts up to a week. It begins with an installation of a series of custom designed networked smart devices (including cameras, microphones, switches, door locks, faucets, and other electronic devices). I then remotely watch over the person 24/7 and control all aspects of their home. I aim to be better than an AI because I can understand them as a person and anticipate their needs. The relationship that emerges falls in the ambiguous space between human-machine and human-human." [Link to work](https://lauren-mccarthy.com/LAUREN).

## Activities

> "Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. They produced performance "events", which included enactments of scores, "Neo-Dada" noise music, and time-based works, as well as concrete poetry, visual art, urban planning, architecture, design, literature, and publishing." [Continue reading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus).

> "The foregrounding of notation in the form of a code or rules extends the legacy of Fluxus scores and conceptual art instructions and the prevalence of algorithmic procedures within computer art, where code or rules become generative strategies for producing outcomes potentially autonomous of artistic control or agency." (Blackwell et all, 2022, pp.133)

* [What Programming Language Would Yoko Ono Create?](https://esoteric.codes/blog/what-programming-language-would-yoko-ono-write)

#### ..⌒－→ Exercise 1:

⏰ 20 minutes

Recreate a score in P5.JS.
* Source: [Images from Fluxus Workbook](http://fluxus.lib.uiowa.edu/resources.html)

#### ..⌒－→ Exercise 2:

⏰ 40 minutes

1. In groups, create a score:
- perform it without using a computer;
- perform it in P5.JS.
3. Each person in the group creates a different interpretation of the score;
4. Pass on your score to another group and perform their score.

**P5.js**
- [Examples - visuals](https://editor.p5js.org/JoBCB/collections/5MtoJ2iVz)
- [Example playing a sound file](https://editor.p5js.org/JoBCB/sketches/oyBBF331B)
- [Example microphone input](https://editor.p5js.org/owenroberts/sketches/SkILeTw4m)
- [P5.js Live by Ted Davis](https://www.teddavis.org/p5live/)
* [P5LIVE: Walking Through a Collaborative p5.js Environment for Live Coding](https://medium.com/processing-foundation/p5live-walking-through-a-collaborative-p5-js-environment-for-live-coding-bc39d95908c6)

#### ..⌒－→ WIP Show:

⏰ 30 minutes

1. Give your performance a title;
2. Define roles: who does what?
3. Create a 'timeline': beginning, middle and end;

## Dicussion & Wrap-up

⏰ 15 minutes

### Coding & Performing

**Performance Tips and Tricks!**
- [Collaborative Coding Practices](https://github.com/tmhglnd/collaborative-coding-practices)
- [Live Coding Jams](https://th4music.net/how-to-live-coding-jams.html)

**How to document the work?**
Documentation can include:
- screenshots;
- video recording;
- saving code as a local file;
- writing about the process;


Fig.7: Image from performance *Hacking Choreography* [by Kate Sicchio](https://www.sicchio.com/)
* [Video of Hacking Choreography](https://vimeo.com/92885158)
* [Algorithmic Choreography by Kate Sicchio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhxqyRugEpc)

**Web Choreographies** w/ Jip de Beer

Fig.8: screenshot from a performance integrating 3D visualizations display of live coded web environments.

* [Video trailler](https://vimeo.com/318721981);
* [Project's website](https://joanachicau.com/web_choreographies.html);

**Second Order Simulacra**


Fig.9: videoclip for the new EP error topography by digital selves, released by the label Cherche Encore,supported by Arts Council England. Photo credit: Antonio Roberts (aka hellocatfood).

* [Link to video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5sJjfAkymI)

# References

**Browser-based Live Coding Tools**
:･ﾟ[Flok](https://flok.cc/) maintenance coordinated by Damián Silvani
:･ﾟ[Estuary](https://estuary.mcmaster.ca/) maintenance coordinated by David Ogborn
:･ﾟ[Gibber](https://gibber.cc) created by Charlie Roberts
:･ﾟ[Hydra](https://hydra.ojack.xyz/) created by Olivia Jack
:･ﾟ[Livecodelab](https://livecodelab.net/index.html) by Davide Della Casa and Guy John
:･ﾟ[Nodysseus](https://nodysseus.io/) created by Ulysses Popple
:･ﾟ[PixelJam](https://pixeljam.glitch.me/) created by Olivia Jack
:･ﾟ[Sema](https://github.com/mimic-sussex/sema) by Francisco Bernardo, Chris Kiefer, Thor Magnusson
:･ﾟ[Strudel](https://strudel.tidalcycles.org/learn/getting-started/) initiated by Felix Roos and Alex McLean

**Artists and Communities**
:･ﾟ [London Live Coding community events](https://pastagang.cc/london) ･ﾟ:
- [TopLap Hub](https://toplap.org/nodes/)
- [TopLap Forum](https://forum.toplap.org/);
- [TopLap Yearly Conference](https://iclc.toplap.org/)
- [Live Streamed live coding performances Eulerroom](https://www.youtube.com/c/Eulerroom/videos)

**Documentaries & Interviews**
- [Programming as Music Performance by Sam Aaron](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lTZ8Tuyu5I)
- [Live Coding Visuals by Sarah Groff Hennigh-Palermo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4pozY_RF5c)
- [Olivia Jack - Hydra, Live Coding Visuals in the Browser](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw7tPDrFIQg&t=1294s)
- [Interviews with various live coders ](https://creativecodingutrecht.nl/index-articles)
- [ on-the-fly.documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntFMuvv2-TY)
- [Algorave Generation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2EZqikCIfY)
- [Artist DIY: Digital Selves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2KeNblKSFM&list=PLkRYCVc1KXTXXma9O9gngxu_RrfHm25vT&index=42&t=1s)
- [Run the code: is algorave the future of dance music?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h340aNznHnM)
- [Show Us Your Screens](https://vimeo.com/20241649)

**Bibliography**

- Blackwell, A.F., Cocker E., Cox G.,  McLean A., Magnusson T.  (2022) Live Coding: A User’s Manual. The MIT Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/13770.001.0001 (accessed 23rd April 2023)
- Xin, X. and Moriwaki K. 2022. Critical Coding Cookbook: Intersectional Feminist Approaches to Teaching and Learning. Available at: https://criticalcode.recipes (accessed 23rd April 2023)