Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Live Coding Performance of Music

The second strangest musical performance I have been to in the last few days was a "Live Coding Visualisation" by Arrian Purcell at ANU in Canberra. The performer sat a computer keyboard and typed in computer code which produced music. While listening to the music we could see the code on screen along with a visualisation.

One performance sounded to me like Philip Glass, mixed with the theme from Peanuts and played by Richard Rodney Bennett. The second started like  Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 accompanied by a modem, then became the theme for a TV police drama set in the Hotel California. But Then I don't know much about music. ;-)

Seeing the computer code created on screen did not help much. An icon based interface, with no text might be more interesting. Also as with a piano performance I wanted to see the performers hands on the keyboard.

ps: The strangest performance I have been to recently was an officer cadent at ADFA, in camouflage uniform, playing a classical tune on a cello.

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