Programming Music for Performance: Live coding with FoxDot
Ryan Kirkbride | Thursday 10:30 | Assembly Room
FoxDot is a Python library for interactive programming, specifically for live coding music. This talk will touch upon the history of live coding, the algorave movement (where people get together and dance to algorithms - yes, it's true), and how you can use Python to make your own music. The FoxDot editor gives users the ability to edit their Python code while it is being run, allowing them to enter a feedback loop where they can execute code, listen to the result, then change the code and re-execute it based on what they hear. Often dubbed "the composer programmer", a live coder makes the act of composing music a performance practice in itself. Python's clean syntax and flexibility lends itself to this and FoxDot allows users to define musical algorithms quickly and easily. The talk will then culminate in a 10 minute improvised performance that will demonstrate the wide range of musical capabilities available in the system. FoxDot is maintained at github.com/Qirky/FoxDot.