Should we sometimes have live coding events without music just to focus on visuals?

While the techniques can be applied to all kinds of time based media, live coding visuals seems to be the second well-established discipline besides music. While outside the live coding community visualist and VJs still often struggle with not being mentioned at all on event flyers, visual live coders are given much more credit at Algoraves and related events. But while one usually would not let two distinct music acts play at the same time, visualists and musicians often get paired at random, both with their own artistic goals, aesthetics and flows that might not always go well together.

 

How do visualists (and musicians) approach these spontaneous moments of co-creation? Are the visuals just there to follow and enhance the music performance? Can we do it the other way around? Are audio-visual duos (or one-coder bands) the way to go? Or should we even dare to have live coding events with no music performers present at all to spotlight the visual live coders?

 

So grab a colourful (or deliberately monochromatic) drink of your choice, and come share your thoughts with us on February 21st at 8PM CEST on https://jitsi.hangar.org/ontheflycantina

 

Anne, Dare, Iván, Luka and Patrick (the on-the-fly research group)