Live coding the code: an environment for 'meta' live code performance

Abstract

Live coding languages operate by constructing and reconstructing a program designed to create sound. These languages often have domain-specific affordances for sequencing changes over time, commonly described as patterns or sequences. Rarely are these affordances completely generic. Instead, live coders work within the constraints of their chosen language, sequencing parameters the language allows with timing that the language allows. This paper presents a novel live coding environment for the existing language lissajous that allows sequences of text input to be recorded, replayed, and manipulated just like any other musical parameter. Although initially written for the lissajous language, the presented environment is able to interface with other browser-based live coding languages such as Gibber. This paper outlines our motivations behind the development of the presented environment before discussing its creative affordances and technical implementation, concluding with a discussion on a number of evaluation metrics for such an environment and how the work can be extended in the future.