slow code
"To know code, is to slow code"
The slow code movement aims to take the virtuosic element out of livecoding of computer music. Dissatisfied with the fast pace of the otherwise very engaging slow sound system London events, Tom Hall co-founded the slow code movement, which 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 meditative, non-hurried, but at the same time anti-minimalist approach. One way of achieving this is through using 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.
More information on all aspects of the the slow code movement and the SSCLib system is to be posted here in due course.