Performing thinking in action: the meletē of live coding

Cocker, E. ORCID: 0000-0002-2985-7839, 2016. Performing thinking in action: the meletē of live coding. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 12 (2), pp. 102-116. ISSN 1479-4713

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Abstract

Within this article, live coding is conceived as a meletē, an Ancient Greek term used to describe a meditative thought experiment or exercise in thought, especially understood as a preparatory practice supporting other forms of critical — even ethical — action. Underpinned by the principle of performing its thinking through 'showing the screen', live coding involves 'making visible' the process of its own unfolding through the public sharing of live decision-making within improvisatory performance practice. Live coding can also be conceived as the performing of 'thinking-in-action', a live and embodied navigation of various critical thresholds, affordances and restraints, where its thinking-knowing cannot be easily transmitted nor is it strictly a latent knowledge or 'know how' activated through action. Live coding involves the live negotiation between receptivity and spontaneity, between the embodied and intuitive, between an immersive flow experience and split-attention, between human and machine, the known and not yet known. Moreover, in performing 'thinking-in-action', live coding emerges as an experimental site for reflecting on different perceptions and possibilities of temporal experience within live performance: for attending to the threshold between the live and mediated, between present and future-present, proposing even a quality of atemporality or aliveness.

Item Type: Journal article
Publication Title: International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media
Creators: Cocker, E.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Date: 2016
Volume: 12
Number: 2
ISSN: 1479-4713
Identifiers:
NumberType
10.1080/14794713.2016.1227597DOI
Divisions: Schools > School of Art and Design
Record created by: Linda Sullivan
Date Added: 15 Nov 2017 11:22
Last Modified: 06 Jun 2018 03:00
URI: https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/32025

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