Vivace: a collaborative live coding language and platform
This work addresses performance drawbacks for musicians and artists using computers as instruments, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing live coding concepts with new collaborative and web-based features.
The paper tackles the challenge of live coding performance by introducing Vivace, a collaborative live coding language and platform built with Web technologies, which allows multiple performers to code simultaneously and synthesizes audio and video with a simple syntax, resulting in a multiplatform tool demonstrated through historical and usage summaries.
Live coding is a performance and creative technique based on improvised and interactive coding. Many recent endeavors have focused in live coding both because of aesthetics and as a way to alleviate performance drawbacks when the musical instrument is a computer. This paper describes the principles and the design of Vivace, a live coding language and environment built with Web technologies to be executed on web browsers. The approach is compelling by 1) allowing many performers to code simultaneously, 2) the synthesis of audio and video, 3) a very simple syntax, 4) being a multiplatform software. We also strive to contextualize Vivace by means of historical and usage summaries including a live coding sub-genre.