I’m privileged to be able to hear my grandmother Billie Campbell singing The Old Lamplighter in the 1940s, even though I was born after her death. I’m also privileged to be able to see (but not hear) my great-grandfather John Ross Campbell on his release from being a political prisoner for incitement to mutiny in 1924. I’m [...]
ChordPunch
by Alex on September 3, 2011
Rumour has it that I may be something to do with the new ChordPunch label, which is promoting algorithmic music for ears and feet. Be careful not to get emotionally attached to any of the chordpunch output, their music, artist roster and administrative staff have algorithmic components in certain cases.
Attending to presentation slides
by Alex on August 26, 2011
I had some fun with my talk at ICMC earlier this month. I started in the usual way with an outline slide, going through bullet points one by one outlining the structure of my talk. Importantly, I tried to talk continuously while the slide was up. On the next slide was a picture of a [...]
Bricolage programming example
by Alex on July 24, 2011
I wrote this for the PPIG newsletter last year, but as there has been a hold-up in publishing the newsletter, I’ve put it here: My paper for PPIG 2010 was about bricolage programmers, in particular artists who write software without any clear plan, but just reacting to the results of each edit. From feedback it [...]
Programming of the Art Computer
by Alex on July 8, 2011
After getting frustrated with trying to have a discussion about programming languages within the confines of twitter, I made a mailing list, mentioned it to a few people and suddenly 100 people appeared. It’s called potac, Programming of the Art Computer, with the topic being the design of (rather than the use of) programming languages [...]
New job + thesis progress
by Alex on May 12, 2011
I’m looking forward to getting started as a research assistant (or associate, not sure) with the OAK group at Sheffield University, working with Simon Tucker on a linked data project for the next six months. Well 80% of me will be doing that, the other 20% will be getting my thesis finished… Speaking of which, [...]
Pitter split
by Alex on April 6, 2011
More live coding, this time multitrack (oops added wrong one earlier, fixed now): Some glitches, with audio and video falling out of sync at times… I quite like the results though, as it goes back in again somehow. UPDATE, here’s another one, with tight time sync this time:
Some videos
by Alex on November 21, 2010
First a quick screencast of my new live coding environment called Text, which is I think a good proof of concept but crashes quite often (including at the end of this video). It’s basically Haskell but with syntax based on proximity in 2D space, rather than adjacency. Type compatible things connect automatically, made possible though [...]
New text editor
by Alex on November 4, 2010
I stopped using feedback.pl, a self-modifying live code editor written in Perl, some time ago, in favour of editing Haskell in emacs. It’s about time I made a specialised editor for the pattern stuff I’ve been doing with Haskell. Actually I have been dreaming of a visual programming language editor for some time, which for [...]
Upcoming performances and workshops
by Alex on October 21, 2010
I’ve been doing things a bit on the quiet lately, including Live Coding on the streets of Liverpool, and in a nice bar in Huddersfield. Time to update the blog I think. Next week we’re doing some live coding in Sheffield: 6:30pm, Oct 29th 2010, Access Space, Sheffield UK - Live Coding alongside Jamie Forth, Scott [...]