slow code
"To know code, is to slow code"
The slow code movement (SCM) aims to take the virtuosic element out of livecoding of computer music. The SCM is to music what the slow food movement is to cooking. Live slow coding attempts to take the excitement and danger (often seen as a feature) out of livecoding, and replace it with a non-competitive, meditative (though non-minimalist) ethos. One way of approaching this is to use a very lazy evaluation scheme implemented within SuperCollider, the Snoidul Slow Code Library (SSCLib) SuperCollider classes.
At a slow code event, the organisers intend that the audience will not feel the need to look at the coders' screens more often than every 5 minutes (+/- 27 secs tolerance). (The slow coders themselves may look at their own screens more often than that using the phi notification method within the SSCLib system.) A recent composition using the SSCLib system, Intramission 6+ for computer alone (a piano and computer version also exists), is an algorithmic composing-through of Morton Feldman's 1953 work Intermission 6.
A forerunner of the slow code movement were the ZEP / WRAP ("Watch, Relax and Program") sessions first organised by Julian Rohrhuber in Cologne in 2001. Tom Hall and Julian Rohrhuber promote slow code ideals as members of the the Elementary Music Ensemble.
NEWS UPDATE 2009-04: Being quite slow formally to express interest in the SCM, Alberto de Campo has recently been appointed a Slow Code Fellow in recognition of his slow code work and the time it sometimes takes for people to fully appreciate the humour in his SuperCollider class and variable names.
More information on all aspects of the the slow code movement and the SSCLib system is to be posted here in due course.