In live coding, the technique called “from scratch” consists of playing live for 9 minutes starting from an empty screen. At the end of the performance all the attendants have to clap no matter the result! From scratch sessions visualize the programming languages at high or low level (try to play from scratch using, for example, Tidal, SuperCollider or Csound) and the tools (classes, functions, data structures, etc.) that allow the livecoder to carry out the different tasks within the performance. These sessions take advantage of the time and the empty screen restriction to explore new possibilities.

MIRLCa is a SuperCollider extension developed by Anna Xambó as part of the EPSRC HDI Network Plus Grant project “MIRLCAuto: A Virtual Agent for Music Information Retrieval in Live Coding”. The system is a follow-up of the also self-built SuperCollider extension MIRLC. MIRLCa combines machine learning algorithms with music information retrieval (MIR) techniques to retrieve crowdsourced sounds from the online database Freesound.org, which results in a sound-based music style. The tool was explored during a workshop co-organised with l’ull cec in collaboration with TOPLAP Barcelona in January 2021. 

In this session, four live coders associated to TOPLAP (Ramon Casamajó, Roger Pibernat, Iván Paz, and Chigüire) will use MIRLCa “from scratch”, adapting the library to their particular approaches and aesthetics.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, this event has a capacity of 15 people, which can assist with an invitation. The event will be streamed in our channels in a later date.

Bios

TOPLAP Barcelona is a collective that practices and promotes live coding as a sound and visual creation technique, generating a technological appropriation through the use and development of free and open software focused on generating relationships and own discourses. TOPLAP Barcelona aims to be an open space that challenges the existing narratives of the female participation in the technical fields of music technology and computer science. For Toplap, live coding is a form of performing art and a creativity technique focused on the real-time writing of source code and the use of interactive programming, it is a new direction in electronic music, it is improvising and formalizing in public. Live coders expose and modify the software in real time, generating music and/or images, while the manipulation of the code is projected to allow viewing the process. Live coding works in all musical genres, and due to the elements that compose it -art, science and technology- it also configures a social and political discourse.

Ramon Casamajó is a musician and computer scientist. QBRNTHSS (pronounced “quebrantahuesos”, meaning “bearded vulture” in Spanish) is the alias that he uses for his solo works focused on electronics and live coding. As QBRNTHSS has released a split LP (Harry Dean Stanton, Call It Anything Records 2019), and participates in algoraves, sessions and workshops organized by the TOPLAP Barcelona collective, with which he is actively involved. He has participated in online events hosted by the international TOPLAP community and some festivals. He is part of Turing Tarpit, a duet with whom has released several works and played regularly in Barcelona’s experimental underground circuit. He also runs the micro record label Call It Anything Records.

Iván Paz. With backgrounds in physics, music and computer science, Iván Paz‘s work is framed in critical approaches to technology centered around from-scratch construction as an exploratory technique. Since 2010, he has been part of the live coding community and has presented workshops, conferences and concerts around America and Europe.

Roger Pibernat. Graduate in Pataphysics and Doctor in the Philosophy of the Absurd, Roger lives parallel lives in dreamland and wakeland.  Obsessed with all things oneiric, recursive, self-referencial and feedback loops, he's constantly in search of new ways to bend and transcend logic.  Professional illustrator and luthier aficionado, he joined the Barcelona Laptop Orchestra, and co-founded the Wú collective with whom he has developed several electroacoustic instruments, electrovisual shows and experimental software.  He is driven by the principle: “not knowing how something is done is a good reason to do it,” which keeps him on the edge of hysteria and baldness.

Chigüire. Hailing from the valley of Caracas, Venezuela, Chigüire is a multimedia artist interested in the dialogue between humans and machines. Although they have spent much time using computers as crude tool to earn money to survive, they found a calling in live coding and computer art in general. Despite being one of the newest participants of TOPLAP Barcelona, they quickly found a home there, and a place to grow in the art of making computers draw and sing, with the hopes of someday getting them to tell us their secrets.

in collaboration with:

and suport from: