Live coding is a performance practice centred upon the use of improvised

Improvisation

Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...

 interactive programming

Interactive programming

Interactive programming is the procedure of writing parts of a program while it is already active. This focuses on the program text as the main interface for a running process, rather than an interactive application, where the program is designed in development cycles and used thereafter...

 and real-time computing (RTC) in creating sound and image based digital media

Digital media

Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital form. It can refer to the technical aspect of storage and transmission Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital (as opposed to analog) form. It can refer to the technical aspect of...

. Live coding is particularly prevalent in computer music

Computer music

Computer music is a term that was originally used within academia to describe a field of study relating to the applications of computing technology in music composition; particularly that stemming from the Western art music tradition...

, combining algorithmic composition

Algorithmic composition

Algorithmic composition is the technique of using algorithms to create music.Algorithms have been used to compose music for centuries; the procedures used to plot voice-leading in Western counterpoint, for example, can often be reduced to algorithmic determinacy...

 with improvisation. Typically, the process of writing is made visible by projecting the computer screen in the audience space, with ways of visualising the code an area of active research. There are also approaches to human live coding in improvised dance

Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

.

Organizations

TOPLAP (The (Temporary|Transnational|Terrestrial|Transdimensional) Organisation for the (Promotion|Proliferation|Permanence|Purity) of Live (Algorithm|Audio|Art|Artistic) Programming) is an informal organization formed in February 2004 to bring together the various communities that had formed around live coding environments. The TOPLAP manifesto asserts several requirements for a TOPLAP compliant performance, in particular that performers' screens should be projected and not hidden. TOPLAP has had a number of international meetings, including the LOSS Livecode festival in 2007, and in 2009 received organisational funding from the PRS Foundation for its UK activities.

Academic research into live coding is ongoing at a number of institutions including the Princeton Sound Lab

Princeton Sound Lab

The Princeton Sound Lab is a research laboratory in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University, in collaboration with the Department of Music...

, the University of Cologne

University of Cologne

The University of Cologne is one of the oldest universities in Europe and, with over 44,000 students, one of the largest universities in Germany. The university is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, an association of Germany's leading research universities...

, the Queensland University of Technology

Queensland University of Technology

Queensland University of Technology is an Australian university with an applied emphasis in courses and research. Based in Brisbane, it has 40,000 students, including 6,000 international students, over 4,000 staff members, and an annual budget of more than A$750 million.QUT is marketed as "A...

 and the Digital Studios at Goldsmiths, University of London. However live coding environments are generally free/open source software efforts and so are in part or wholly developed by independent practitioners.

Sample Performance

A Study in Keith is a musical live coding performance in Impromptu

Impromptu (programming environment)

Impromptu is a Mac OS X programming environment for live coding. Impromptu is built around the Scheme language, which is a member of the Lisp family of languages...

 by Andrew Sorensen. The first two minutes (1:56) are silent, while the performer writes the program that will produce the introduction of the piece. From then on, he modifies the code on the fly in order to evolve the composition.

Live coding environments

• SuperCollider
  Supercollider
  A Supercollider is a high energy particle accelerator. The term may refer to:* Superconducting Super Collider, planned 80 km project in Texas, canceled in 1993...
  
  
• ChucK
  ChucK
  ChucK is a concurrent, strongly timed audio programming language for real-time synthesis, composition, and performance, which runs on Mac OS X, Linux, Microsoft Windows, and iPhone/iPad. It is designed to favor readability and flexibility for the programmer over other considerations such...
  
  
• Fluxus
• Impromptu
  Impromptu (programming environment)
  Impromptu is a Mac OS X programming environment for live coding. Impromptu is built around the Scheme language, which is a member of the Lisp family of languages...
  
  
• Pure Data
  Pure Data
  Pure Data is a visual programming language developed by Miller Puckette in the 1990s for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works. While Puckette is the main author of the program, Pd is an open source project with a large developer base working on new extensions to it. It is...
  
  
• Max (software)
  Max (software)
  Max is a visual programming language for music and multimedia developed and maintained by San Francisco-based software company Cycling '74. During its 20-year history, it has been widely used by composers, performers, software designers, researchers, and artists for creating innovative recordings,...
  
  
• Quoth
• Extempore

External links

• Programming With Time, Cyber-physical programming
• Real DJs Code Live, Wired magazine, March 2006
• Official TOPLAP Wiki
• Brown, A. R. 2006. Code Jamming. M/C Journal, 9(6).
• A short film on live coding and the TOPLAP manifesto, Stephen Ramsay, Critical Code Studies Workshop, March 2010.