Re-engaging the Body and Gesture in Musical Live Coding

At first glance, the practice of musical live coding seems distanced from the gestures and sense of embodiment common in musical performance, electronic or otherwise. This workshop seeks to explore the extent to which this assertion is justified, to re-examine notions of gesture and embodiment in the context of musical live coding performance, to consider historical approaches to synthesizing musical programming and gesture, and to look to the future for new ways of doing so. The workshop will consist firstly of a critical discussion of these issues and related literature. This will be followed by applied practical experiments involving ideas generated during these discussions. The workshop will conclude with a recapitulation and examination of these experiments in the context of previous research and proposed future directions.