Transduction in Action: Live Coding through a Simondonian Perspective

This paper applies Gilbert Simondon’s relational ontology to the artistic practice of live coding. I examine how Simon-
don’s concepts of individuation, transduction, metastability, and transindividuality illuminate live coding as a process
that enables multiple entities (code, sound, performer, audience, and technical environment) to undergo simultaneous
transformations through shared memories and mutual encodings. Simondon’s concept of transindividuality provides
a powerful lens for understanding how live coding creates a complex interrelation between individual participation
and collective experience, revealing the simultaneous unfolding of interior psychic structuration and the emergence
of collective meaning. Building on these theoretical perspectives, I analyze traditional live coding methods and pro-
pose a novel approach using SCTweets as algo-sonic individuals in dynamic feedback networks, where techniques of
self-modulation, hetero-modulation, and coupling create complex systems with emergent behaviors. This framework
reconfigures the relationship between creator and sonic artifact, allowing musical manifestations to occur outside an-
thropocentric intention while providing a reflexive distance to experience both humanity’s innate technicities and the
human presence latent within algorithmic structures.