2014 round-up – part one

Time to reflect on a busy year.. I’ll probably edit this post a bit as I remember things.

January

2014 started with a workshop with Thor Magnusson at Access Space, introducing our mini-languages Tidal and ixilang. This went really nicely, and lead into a really great pubcode in the Rutland Arms opposite, where workshop attendees passed around a wireless keyboard, taking turns to make some background music with Tidal, nice to have some collaborative live coding as background to drinking and chatting. Here’s a video of that. It would be great to find time to do more of these events..

February

I had a few days residency with Ellen Harlizius-Klück and Dave Griffiths, hosted by Julian Rohrhuber in the Robert Schumann School, Dusseldorf. We presented our work to the students and worked on the funding proposal which was to become the Weaving Codes, Coding Weaves project.

I also collaborated with Thor on another ixilang and Tidal workshop, this time in dotBrighton. One day we’ll have time to share what we learned as published research..

There was also a trip to London, speaking at the Roundhouse Rising festival, and then heading to the White Building for a fun improv with Leafcutter John. Here’s the video from the latter, featuring some fine audience participation:

March

Things started heating up in March, starting with the first drum and code collaboration with Matthew Yee-King as Canute, at LIJEC in Leeds. I also did a solo performance there, which Ash Sagar kindly recorded:

I also did a performance-lecture in February with Geoff Cox in Aarhus, not in person but by making a custom Linux distribution, and Geoff playing back my recorded keystrokes to ‘live code’ some stuff including manipulating his voice.

Then a sound choreography<>body code performance with Kate Sicchio, at a fine Hack Circus event in Sheffield. We also interviewed each other for Hack Circus magazine.

It was this month that Thor and I kicked off the AHRC Live Coding Research Network with a fine event in London with some great speakers reflecting on the field.

A real landmark event was the FIBER/STEIM Algorave in Amsterdam, amazing crowd,  venue, and organisation, and Matthew and I managed to do a two hour Canute performance, nonstop.

I also did an online streamed performance for the Rhizome telethon, which you can retrospectively watch here.

April

April opened with a great fun, but sadly unrecorded drum and code Jazz Improv performance with Paul Hession, at my old haunt in Goldsmiths, and with an associated AISB paper which you can read online. Here’s one of Paul’s showreels, featuring a snippet of one of our practice sessions from the 15:50 mark.

https://vimeo.com/111557125

Another collaboration explored this month was with the multi-talented Ash Sagar as Algorithmic Yorkshire, playing up in the Gateshead Algorave. Here’s a practice session recording:

The algorave coincided with the national maker faire at the centre for life, where we did a TOPLAP stall, and I did a solo performance slightly upstaged by a clown walking up and down making explosions.

Finally I gave a talk at the excellent Torque symposium on Mind, Language and Technology in Liverpool, immortalised in a fine e-book, with a really great cross-disciplinary range of contributors.

May

May started with a dream event “Sonic Pattern and the Textility of Code“, which I organised in collaboration with Karen Gaskill of the Crafts Council. The line-up was fantastic, looking at aspects of code, sound and textiles from multiple perspectives, and the venue filled right up.

There were quite a few other talks and performances in May, a solo streamed performance to Trix in Antwerp, and the first “Shared Buffer” performance with David Ogborn and Eldad Tsabary, using my Tidal live coding language in a shared web environment made by David called Extramuros, so we could play together despite being in different countries. Here’s the recording of this first set, fully improvised (we never have found time to practice properly):

It went nicely, I’ve not had much chance to play together with other Tidal users before.

There were also talks at Culture Lab Newcastle, Connect the Dots festival in Sheffield, the University of York, and a rare Slub performance at Thinking Digital Arts in Newcastle, although the latter was compromised by problems with sound.

 June

This month saw the final two performances of Sound Choreographer <> Body Code with Kate, in Rich Mix (as part of a Torque event) and in Frankfurt organised by the Node crew, where I also did an algorave style performance. Well maybe not final, but Kate has since moved to New York City, and we both want to develop a new piece for future performances. In search of residencies..

I also had the pleasure of performing with improviser Greta Eacott at the ISCMME conference in Leeds, who happens to be the daughter of John Eacott, who I know as an early supercollider live coder from back in the day. Here’s a recording:

End of part one.. Part two to follow hopefully before the end of the year.