Livecoding in Education

This is a graduate school project  (Masters program in the College of Education at NC State) to create arts’ based resources to supplement either math, programming or science classes, oriented to middle or high school. My goal is for this to be an exploratory, open-ended, creative process that does not have any right or wrong answers. I also wanted it to be accessible for K-12 students that are learning remotely. Everything will run in a browser…even on a Chromebook. With the stress of everything that is going on, I thought that this might be useful.

This software falls into a genre called “livecoding” where the software can be manipulated while it is running and the output is always changing. Decisions to make changes are usually  aesthetic rather than technical. There are links in the “Descriptions” section below to resources to familiarize yourself with these tools

I am gathering tutorial material that could be used in a remote classroom setting. But first, I wanted to have some people take a look at some examples and get their opinions of the possibilities. I am planning to present this to undergrad college of education students at N.C. State.

My background is in Computer Science and my teaching experience is with adults, not children so lately the journey has not been familiar and I could use some feedback. Please share your thoughts with me at twk@ncsu.edu

Tom Karches
MEd graduate student @ NC State
twk@ncsu.edu

Descriptions 

Hydra and Orca are livecoding environments where the goal is to make a musical or visual composition through a programming language that is unique to the environment. It is like being a DJ with programming. They both support Chromebooks and do not require that software be loaded — everything runs in the browser

Hydra, a visual livecoding tool, uses a simple command structure to create geometric patterns that can be influenced by sound or mouse motion. These programs are very easy to share and manipulate. The main website for Hydra chooses a random program which can then be altered in the browser. Tutorial material would show examples of how the visuals are affected by the code. It allows for using mathematical transforms on live webcam streams or videos

Hydra – About – https://ojack.xyz/articles/hydra/
Hydra – main web site – http://hydra.ojack.xyz
Hydra (talk, demo) – Olivia Jack – https://youtu.be/cw7tPDrFIQg?t=548
Hydra – Hydra Patterns (Twitter) – https://twitter.com/hydra_patterns

Orca is a visually oriented, text based, minimalist livecoding tool. Orca’s creator describes it as an “esoteric programming language”. Syntax is 2 dimensional. Musical output is generated through code that is dynamically changing as the code is running. It does not generate sound itself, but sends signals to other programs on the computer or external music devices. Tutorial material would consist of a short presentation on how Orca works, after which students would write their own Orca code. Programs are just plain test files so they can be cut and pasted into an email and sent.

Orca – video tutorial – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktcWOLeWP-g
Orca – web based tutorial site – https://metasyn.github.io/learn-orca/
Orca – example composition –  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSFrBFBd7vY