New book – Live Coding: A User’s Manual

We are happy to announce the publication of Live Coding: A User’s Manual, by Alan F. Blackwell, Emma Cocker, Geoff Cox, Alex McLean and Thor Magnusson (MIT Press 2022). This book is open access and can be freely downloaded in PDF, Mobi and Epub formats, and further edited, subject to a CC-BY-SA license.

https://livecodingbook.toplap.org/

Live Coding: A User’s Manual is the first comprehensive introduction to the practice and a broader cultural commentary on the potential for live coding to open up deeper questions about contemporary cultural production and computational culture. This multiauthored book—by artists and musicians, software designers, and researchers—provides a practice-focused account of the origins, aspirations, and evolution of live coding, including expositions from a wide range of live coding practitioners. In a more conceptual register, the authors consider liveness, temporality, and knowledge in relation to live coding, alongside speculating on the practice’s future forms.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544818/live-coding/

image: cover design by Joana Chicau.