Meta: Dialogue with the Non-Present

On the meta-level an algorithmic performer interacts dialogically with art, history or culture across distant time and space. Even though the focus of this research- practice is on the synchronous, intersubjective interactions during performance, it is worthwhile to mention this level here. A dialogic approach to performance is never a solipsistic practice. Thus a focus on the remote and asynchronous connections may explain how the sonic materials used in Dialogic Coding performance relate to other practices. Bakhtin demonstrated the intertextuality of meaning and how each utterance always carries its prior uses with it. Similarly, will such a reuse of a 'readymade' in program code i.e. the recycling of pre existing code, introduce other meanings and contexts of meaning into local performance situations. Such creation of symbolic relationships through musical gestures with a hybrid style has been termed signifying or heteroglossic playing in jazz improvisation (Monson, 1994; Horn, 2000).

3.2.1 A Dialogic Sonic Vocabulary

Computing technology enables processes of creation, manipulation and a recombination of various materials – readymade or newly synthesized – in real- time. This makes it possible to create dialogic relationships with the original context and meaning of the materials used in a live performance. While this situation is obvious in the case of concrete sound, the connections are less easy to see in cases of re-used program code. In my performance practice each successive collaboration has contributed specific elements to my 'sound-code- archive'53 _{on my computer. This is facilitated by the programming environment I} use: SuperCollider stores all code as text files which means that they are easily editable and shareable with others54_{. Through my participation in a few networked} performances of powerbooks_unplugged (pbup) (see section 1.6.4) I was able to work with a collection of sounds which the band had developed through their own

53_{This code can be found in my repository online – https://jonashummel.de/archives/code} 54_{The reader may imagine that, similar to any other program code, complex actions or sound} processes may be expressed only by letters. A large collection of, for example, descriptions for sound synthesis will only have the size of a few Kilobytes and can as a consequence be easily sent via email in order to then be executed on the local machine which generates the same sounds but in a different time and space.

performance practice over the years. The sharing of this source material in coded form lies at the core of pbup's live performance practice. I continued to use parts of these sounds during studio rehearsals as well as in subsequent improvised performances.

Similarly my sound collection was influenced by other encounters in the process of learning to live code with the SuperCollider language. For example, the website/platform 'sccode.org' provides an example of a resource which contributed some sounds to my archive. Also the publicly available tutorial sessions by pioneer live coder Nick Collins left traces. And lastly, in many situations when developing a performance in an improvised mode of interaction through live coding techniques, I turned to the integrated 'help files' of the software itself which provide starting points for how a code object may be used to create sound. This strategy might seem plagiaristic at first but the reader should be reminded that from the code for the generation of the source material a myriad of other possibilities for actuating these sounds are possible. Furthermore, as a possibility of the accessibility of the synthesis process in the SuperCollider software it is very easy (or even afforded) to change any source code into something new every time it is used. This is a strategy used within the live coding community.

Another insight gained from the practice concerns how such sounds or synthesis code is actually produced. When working (compositionally) on the timbre of a sound for example, this is an iterative process: One may change one aspect of the code, i.e. replace one code object with another which produces a similar but different effect. Alternatively, one may also change the input to the process to explore how the sound changes for different inputs. This code exploration follows an approach of sonic approximation: To get closer to an imagined sound or an area of interest one needs to apply radical changes first and the closer the sound gets to the idea, the smaller the changes in the code will be. When such a dialogically coded sound is used during a concert, the final activity during a performance is actually one of making only these little changes and adjustments during the running synthesis process. Based on such experience I identify a connection in my practice to what Fischlin et al. (2013: 58) have called the notion of 'rifference':

The capacity of improvised music to invoke differential ways of being in the world across multiple contingencies that include politics, ideology, history, spirituality, ethnicity, and alternative forms of social and musical practice.

Here, Fischlin et al. refer to how improvised performance demonstrates a particular kind of otherness55 _{through the act of performing. From this viewpoint I} have developed a coding strategy which combines non-obvious copy & paste (the 'sampling' of program code) with small incremental changes through live coding – this can be seen as 'rifferential' way of music making. A minimalistic live coding praxis may be rifferent, perhaps not in the full cultural or political dimension of Fischlin et al., yet as a provocation56 _{within the rituals of traditional music} performance.

55_{'Otherness' or 'alterity' describes the basic experience of the 'other' in a dialogic relation, the} dialogic partner as different to oneself.

56_{By 'provocation' I refer to the challenges which laptop performance has introduced into the rituals} of music performance. See the discussion on liveness for examples (Cascone, 2002; Auslander, 2008; Sanden, 2013).

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