Street Code - live coding in public space

Live coding is a technique for creating music through the computation of algorithms in real time. It includes a set of philosophical and technological characteristics that have the potential to unchain deep and urgent questions regarding the aesthetic, politic, technical and social aspects of music. Space, as a common thread that deals with each one of these aspects, has been an important subject of questioning and exploration by live coders throughout the three decades of development of this practice. Live coding is intimately related to hacker ethics and appropriates current technological advancements, bringing a new set of tools and aesthetic approaches to music creation. Moreover, thanks to a particular collaboration between music composition and computer science, live coders are endowed with the curiosity and the capability to overcome given cultural rules to create new spaces and contexts for their performances. Public space offers live coders an immense territory for exploration through the possibility of the recontextualisation of artistic codes, the reappropriation of the social relations of music, and the diversification of the conception of space. Live coders can offer distinct contextualisations of aesthetic experiences in the urban space unexplored thus far. Therefore, in this paper, I intend to bring attention to the public space as a consequent stage for live coded music.