Herding Cats: Observing Live Coding in the Wild

Abstract

After an eventful decade of live-coding activities, this article seeks to explore the practice with the aim of situating it in the history of contemporary arts and music. The article introduces several key points of investigation in live-coding research and discusses some examples of how live-coding practitioners engage with these points in their system design and performances. In light of the extremely diverse manifestations of live-coding activities, the problem of defining the practice is discussed, and the question is raised whether live coding is actually necessary as an independent category.