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Christopher Douce

A111 Journal – December 2020

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Saturday, 2 Jan 2021, 09:53

1 Dec 20

I divide an empty TMA document into three sections, ready for writing. With my notes now navigable, I transfer some of the key terms from the module materials into my TMA document to remember what they are. 

I begin with the Mozart section. I listen to the fragment and note down some transitions and times.

It’s time to return to my day job.

4 Dec 20

I must have listened to the sound fragment around 15 times. I quite enjoyed describing the piece of music. I realised I need to simplify my writing to reflect its structure. There was a moment where I felt I understood what the module team were trying to ask us to discover.

Next up: Dickens. I minimise Outlook, minimise my web browser and reach for the text I’ve got to analyse for the TMA question.

It’s not long before I analyse the narrative voice, and then I quickly run out of steam. I need to return to the module materials to get a few more ideas about what analysing literature means.

6 Dec 20

I print out my draft TMA 2 and do some copy editing with a pen and paper. Next step: make those changes in the Word version. As I go, I tick off all those copy edits with a different coloured pen as I go. Final step: submit TMA 2, with just under a week to go before the deadline.

12 Dec 20

Today is the day when the iCMA opens. I work through the materials on academic conduct (which I feel pretty confident about), and then dive in to have a go at it. Although I had more planned for today, I was happy with what I had achieved: completing another bit of the module. 

15 Dec 20

I had one main objective for today: to get through a section about Greek and Roman sculpture. 

Looking at the TMA 3, I’m thinking of answering the question about Blues or Creative Writing. This said, I thought it would be important to read through all the other chapters in the second book to learn some new things, and to be open to the possibility that I might become interested in the other disciplines.

I made notes about the concept of ‘traditions’, which is described in the introduction; that it is about ‘handing things over’, and relates to “customs, artistic styles, ideas, practices or beliefs”. There was also the point that traditions can “enrich our experience of the contemporary world” (p.4). 

Onto the module materials; I was introduced to a bunch of terms: Greek, Roman, Greco-Roman, Ancient and Classical. Other terms include “votive offerings” and a section entitled “kouroi and korai”. There were differences in forms, and differences in poses.

I quite enjoyed watching the videos that describe how three contemporary artists have been included by ancient sculpture.

The final bit of today: a study skills section about referencing.

Next bit; the bit that I’m really looking forward to: the blues.

19 Dec 20

I’ve spent a few hours over the last week going through the online version of the module materials that relate to the blues. 

I can immediately recognise a traditional blues song when it is played, but I was never really consciously aware of its structure. In this section we learnt about the origins of the blues, the themes that are generally explored, listened to a number of tracks. We were introduced to the concept of scales, chords, and how they relate to the 12-bar blues structure. Although I had a sketchy idea of some of these concepts, it was good to read a formal definition.

During this week there were tracks by The Beatles, Gershwin, Queen, Robert Petway, Mamie Smith, W. C. Handy, Johnny Cash, and references to B.B. King, Bessie Smith and Blind Lemon Jefferson. It was a really nice mixture.

Towards the end of this section, there was another bit about study skills, and how I went about planning the writing of assessments. It turns out that we have to submit a plan as a part of the next assessment.

There are two things that I want to look up. The first is: what modules are there on the music pathway; I’m curious. Secondly: what, exactly, have we got to do for the next TMA? 

I’m looking forward to the next chapter, which is all about creative writing.

28 Dec 20

I read the section on creative writing (without making notes), a few days after the above entry. I also went through the online materials. I particularly liked the audio recording of the short story. Some points from the creative writing section I need to take away: character, imagery and setting, point of view, time, and showing and telling (with an emphasis on showing, so the reader figures things out) (p.136-137). 

I feel a bit guilty about not explicitly completing the activities in the module materials (I know they’re important since they help us to prepare for the assessment), but I’m thinking I’ll go back to them if I choose the creative writing question for the TMA.

The next section is all about reading poetry.

We’re introduced to poems by Hardy, Blake, Donne, and Bishop, before I went to the online materials. Key terms I picked up on were: metaphor (obviously), simile (which was called a type of metaphor), anthropomorphism (which was also under the heading of metaphor), form, conceit, free verse, iambic tetrameter, trimeter and pentameter. 

I quite like the poetry section. I see them as descriptive puzzles that express something, which are there to be decoded and analysed. The more one studies them, the more they can speak to us.

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Christopher Douce

A111 - November 2020

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Friday, 1 Jan 2021, 16:02

1 Nov 20

I got stuck into the writing of the TMA, beginning with Cleopatra. I got quite far. I made a start on the second part, which is about Queen Elizabeth. I think it’s harder since the question may be ‘getting at’ something that I might be missing.

3 Nov 20

I have another go at writing the TMA in the morning, but I don’t get very far. I’ve identified another point that I can mention in my answer about Cleopatra, but the Elizabeth section remains a bit of a mystery.

7 Nov 20

Three days before the TMA 1 submission deadline. Today I’m going to finish it and the move to the next section. I’ve got the whole of the morning to look through the Elizabeth materials again and edit together my answer. I’m hoping that a bit of time away from the question might have helped. 

I’ve submitted TMA 1! 

After a couple of days away, I had noticed some things that I hadn’t noticed before. A question that I have been asking myself was: “why is the module team telling me this?” I’m not sure whether the form of my TMA answers is what the module team are looking for. This said, I’ll get a steer from my tutor soon enough.

At the start of the next unit, I was asked about what I thought about Mozart. I listened to 4 different tracks before being introduced to the terms: pitch, range, timbre and dynamics (I knew what pitch and timbre was from other studies). I then read something about his sister, Nannerl, before learning the definitions of new terms for genres: symphony, concerto, aria and sonata. Although I vaguely understood what these were, I couldn’t define them with confidence.

I feel I’ve achieved quite a bit today. Time to turn off the laptop.

8 Nov 20

I read about the sonata, and aspects of its structure (that it usually has 3 or 4 movements).

I also read that Mozart toured around different countries and adopted musical styles of the places that he visited and the composers that he met. I also learnt about Joseph Boulogne Chevalier de Saint Georges, who I had never heard of before. I took a few moments to listen to some tracks of his work on Spotify; this is something that I’m definitely going to go back to do.

Next up was the introduction of new(ish) terms: tutti (all), and solo (alone), and an introduction of the piano, and an activity that encouraged us to consider the difference in the tibre between the harpsichord and this new-fangled piano instrument.

My study day concluded with a couple of listening activities: figuring out the genre of a piece of music and the listening to Mozart’s 9th concerto for keyboard.

9 Nov 20

Mozart in Vienna.

In this section of the module, we had a few more listening activities. There was an activity to identify different musical genres, and an activity to listen to the interplay between soloists and the orchestra. There was also a quick look at Haydn, who I didn’t really know anything about (other than knowing his name).

The section ended with a video that explored different perceptions of Mozart’s genius, and how this is portrayed in the 1984 film Amadeus, which I have seen a couple of times (a film I recorded from television using a video recorder over 30 years ago). 

A key point appeared to be the way that he applied his talents as a musician.

11 Nov 20

Time for a tutorial. I attended part 2 of the online day school (since the face to face day school had been cancelled), which focussed on two topics: Dickens and Van Gogh. I was initially a bit confused about the tutorial schedule, since part 2 was presented before part 1, and I’ve not got through these chapters yet.

Key points that I picked up from the Dickens bit was the way you could begin to describe a text: you could refer to the genre, description, the role of the narrator, the themes, who the reader is, sentence length, and a whole host of other aspects. It’s been at least 30 years since I studied literature.

Next up was a section about Van Gogh. Some key terms (or things to think about) included: composition, brush work, tone, genre, colour, medium, modelling. An aspect of the tutorial was considering how a particular image may relate to the artists reputation.

Although I haven’t got to these sections in the module material yet, I’m finding that I’m being drawn to section about art rather than literature, which has surprised me. Things might change as I do more study.

12 Nov 20

It’s the first thing in the morning.

There’s a few more things I need to look at to complete the Mozart chapter: a read through of the summary, and two study skills section. The first study skills section is about close listening to music.

Key topics includes rhythm and metro, timbre, melody, harmony and texture. I’m introduced to a whole range of descriptive terms which could be used with each other, such as, such as contour, range, steps and jumps, pitch and transparency.

I’m not going to finish it all today, so I’m going to save the reflective task, review, and further study sections for another day.

15 Nov 20

It looks like I’ve missed the goals that I should have set during week 1. I notice there’s another activity that I need to complete, so I answered the questions about which learning outcome I feel is the most surprising, which skills or abilities I already have, and which skills I think I’ll most improve. The skill I thought would be most useful to develop is the skill of engaging critically with familiar and unfamiliar points of view; I’m not (yet) sure what “engaging critically” means in the arts and humanities. 

There’s another activity I need to complete: looking ahead to book 1, which individual are you most looking forward to studying? My answer is: Mary Wollsonecraft, for the simple reason is that I know more about the other figures than I do of her.

The last part of the Mozart: the optional further study bit. I did completed these tasks quite quickly, but I might return to them. There was a surprise at the end: we could access something called the Naxos Music Library to listen to entire piano concertos, sonatas and symphonies. I’m not sure whether this is a gift or a distraction!

After quite a bit of distraction, I finally made it onto the Mark Wollstonecraft unit, which is really topical due to the unveiling of a statue.

It wasn’t long before I got to the main section, which described her writing of “the vindication” and then got to the section about her reputation. I’ve learnt quite a few things: a bit of history, something about her link to Shelly, and the way that reputations can change over time. The next bit is going to be the online material and the additional reading before moving onto the next unit.

18 Nov 20

It’s tutorial time. I arrived late, but just in time to note down two abbreviations which relate to literature analysis: GAP, and LIST. I’m going to have to return to the recording to catch up on the bit that I missed. For the section on Van Gogh, we looked at two contrasting portraits; a self-portrait, and another portrait by Gainsborough. I liked how the tutor discussed the differences and used some of the terms from the module materials.

20 Nov 20

A day off! Back to the final sections of Wollstonecraft. I completed the final activities, read a skills section on reading, made some notes, and listened to the In our Time recording, which connected really nicely with her biography which was summarised in the module materials. There was a lot in that recording, and talk about other figures and ideas that I had not encountered before.

In other news, I’ve got my TMA 1 back! I did better than I expected.

22 Nov 20

I finally start the next unit, which is about Dickens. 

I was soon directed to a reading activity by the set text: the reading of A Christmas Carol. I’ve heard the story many times (in various different forms). It was interesting to read the . I felt that the final section (stave, as it was called) was quite short in comparison to the others.

23 Nov 20

Before a day of work, I read sections 4 and 5 in the unit text, where I noticed the following terms were written in bold: narrative voice, first person, realism, modes, and personification. One thing that I found really interesting was a reference to literature and realism, where it describes “the physical details of everyday life through precise, factual language”.

25 Nov 20

I seem to have found a habit now; studying in the morning before work.

I finished reading the Dickens unit, and have started the Van Gogh chapter. I really liked the activity where we were asked to edit a portion of text, as if we were going to read it to an audience. We were then encouraged to compare our edits, to some edits that had been made by Dickens himself. I’m not comparing myself to Dickens or anything, but I was surprised that we had edited out very similar sections. 

The unit emphasised the importance of writing and rewriting, and concluded with a question about the themes that Dickens had been drawing upon. We were also directed to optional further study work in OpenLearn: Charles Dickens: Celebrity Author.

Onto Van Gogh; who I know very little about. 

We were shown a painting, and asked to consider colour, subject matter, brushwork, lifelike qualities (or not), design, pattern and shape, and any personal associations that we may bring to the viewing of an image. Next up is the unit chapter. 

I think that’s it for today; I need to return to my day job.

26 Nov 20

I enjoyed finishing reading the Van Gogh unit.

I learnt about his link with other artists, particularly Gauguin, and how he admired a painter called Millet. I liked the activity where we had to compare and contrast the use of how Van Gogh and Monet used colour in two paintings which had a different theme. There as also an activity where we had to read a transcription and translation of a letter that he wrote to his brother, Theo. Although I had heard somewhere that he had cut off his ear, I didn’t know about the extent of his mental illness. The module materials suggested that he painted despite mental illness, not because of it (but that is, of course, a huge simplification).

Next up: the materials on the module website, and then the writing of TMA 2. I feel as if I’m keeping to the module calendar pretty closely.

29 Nov 20

I finish reading through the Van Gogh module materials and complete the activities. I quite enjoyed the online activity where we had to use some of the terms from the module to describe and analyse a selection of paintings.

I’m now faced with a choice; I need to write about two of the four disciplines that I’ve briefly studied. My choice is: music, philosophy, literature or art.

I look through the TMA.

I rule out the Mary Wollstonecraft question, not because of the subject or her philosophy, but the wording of some of the questions put me off.

I’ve decided to do the Dickens question simply because it’s been such a long time since I’ve studied literature, and that tackling the literature option might do me good.

The final choice: Mozart or Van Gogh; music or art.

Although I found the materials really interesting, there’s something about Van Gogh that annoys me that I can’t quite put my finger on. Whilst I think I can answer the question using the terms and language in the module, I quite like the idea of analysing and writing about music.

My choice: Mozart and Dickens.

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Christopher Douce

Psychology of Programming Interest Group 2012 workshop: London Metropolitan University

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Wednesday, 14 Oct 2020, 11:41

The 24th Psychology of Programming Interest Group workshop was held at London Metropolitan University between 21st and 23rd November 2012.  I wasn't able to attend the first day of the workshop due to another commitment, but was able to attend the second and third days (this is a shame since I've heard from the other delegates that the first day was pretty good and yielded a number of very thought provoking presentations and discussions).  This blog post is a summary of the days I managed to attend.  I'm sharing this post with the hope that this summary might be useful to someone.

Day 2: Expertise, learning to program, tools and doctorial consortium

Expertise

The first presentation of the day was entitled, 'Thrashing, tolerating and compromising in software development' by Tamara Lopez from the Open University.  I understand thrashing to be the application of problem solving strategies in an ineffective and unsystematic way, and tolerating to be working with temporary solutions with the intention of moving a solution along to another state, and compromising: solving a problem but not being entirely happy with its solution.  An interesting note that I've made during Tamara's presentation relates to the use of feelings.  I have also experienced 'thrashing' in the moments before I recover sufficient metacognitive awareness to understand that a cup of tea and a walk is necessary to regain perspective.

The second presentation of the day was by Rebecca Yates, from LERO based at the University of Limerick.  Rebecca's talk was entitled, 'conducting field studies in software engineering: an experience report' and her focus was all about program comprehension, i.e. what happens when programmers start a new job and start to learn an unfamiliar code base.  I made a special note of her points about the importance of going out into industry and the importance of addressing ethical issues. 

One of the 'take away' points that I got from Rebecca's talk was that getting access to people in industry can be pretty tough - the practical issues of carrying out programming research, such as time, restrictions about access to intellectual property and the importance of persuasion (or making the aim of research clear to those who are going to play a part in it) can all be particularly challenging.

Learning to program

Louis Major, from the University of Keele, started the second session with a paper entitled, 'teaching novices programming using a robot simulator: case study protocol'.  Louis told us about his systematic literature review before introducing us to his robot simulator which could be used to create programs to do simple tasks such as line following and line counting.  Louis also spoke about his research method, a case study approach which applied multiple methods such as tests and interviews.

Louis also spoke about the value of robots, that they were considered to be appealing, enjoyable, exciting and robotics (as a whole subject) had a strong connection with STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).  The advantage of using simulations is that there are fewer limitations in terms of space, cost and technical barriers.

A couple of months after the workshop I was reminded about the relevance of Louis's research after having been tangentially involved in an introductory Open University module, TM129 Technologies in Practice, which also makes use of a robot simulator.  Students are also given the challenge of solving simple problems, including the challenge of creating line following robots. 

The second talk in this part of the workshop was by PPIG regular, Richard Bornat.  Richard's talk, entitled 'observing mental models in novice programmers' built on earlier work that was presented at PPIG where Richard and his colleague Saeed had designed a test that was claimed could (potentially) predict whether students were able to grasp some of the principles of programming. 

An interesting observation was that when it comes to computer programming the results sometimes have a bi-modal distribution.  What this means that if student pass, they are likely to pass very well.  On the other hand, there is also a peak in numbers when it comes to students who struggle.  During (and after) his talk, he presented that some students found some of the concepts that were connected to programming (such as the assignment operator) fundamentally difficult.

Paul Orlov, who joined us all the way from St. Petersburg, spoke about 'investigating the role of programmers peripheral vision: a gaze-contingent tool and experimental proposal'.  Paul's talk connected with earlier research where experimental tools, such as a 'restricted focus viewers', were used in conjunction with program comprehension experiments. Paul's talk inspired a lot of debate and questions.  I remember one discussion which was about the distinction between attention and seeing (and that we can easily learn not to attend to information should we choose not to).

Ben Du Boulay, formerly from the University of Sussex, was our discussant.  Ben mentioned that when it came to interdisciplinary research conducting systematic literature reviews can be particularly difficult due to the number of different publication databases that researcher have to consider.  Connecting with Richard's paper, Ben asked the question about what might be the fundamental misunderstandings that could emerge when it comes to computer programming.  Regarding Paul's paper which connects to the theme of perception and attention, Ben made the point that we can learn how to ignore things and that attention can be focussed depending on the task that we have to complete.  Ben also commented on earlier discussions, such as the drive to change the current computing curriculum in schools.

One thing that learning programming can do for us is help to teach us problem solving skills.  There is a school of thought that learning programming can be viewed as how Latin was once viewed; that learning to program is inherently good for you. Related points include the importance of task and the relationship to motivation.

Tools

Fraser McKay from the University of Kent presented, 'evaluation of subject-specific heuristics for initial learning environments: a pilot study'.  In human-computer interaction (or interaction design), heuristics are a set of rules of thumb that help you to think about the usability of a system.  General heuristics, such as those by Nielsen are very popular (as well as being powerful), but there is the argument that they may not be best suited to uncovering problems in all situations. 

Fraser focused on two environments that were considered helpful in the teaching of programming: Scratch (MIT) and Greenfoot.  Although this was very much a 'work in progress' paper, it is interesting to learn about the extent to which different sets of heuristics might be used together, and the way in which a new set of heuristics might be evaluated.

Mark Vinkovitis presented the work of his co-authors, Christian Prause and Jan Nonnen, which was entitled, 'a field experiment on gamification of code quality in Agile development'.  Initially I found the term 'gamification' quite puzzling, but I quickly understood it in terms of, 'how to make software development into a game, where the output can be appreciated and recognised by others'.

The idea was to connect code development with the use of quality metrics to obtain a score to indicate how well developers are doing.  This final presentation gave way to a lot of debate about whether developers might be inclined to develop software code in such a way to create high rankings.  (There is also the question of whether different domains of application will yield different quality scores).  I really like the concept.  Gamification exposes of different dimensions of software development which has the potential to be connected to motivation.  It strikes me that the challenge lies with understanding how one might affect the other whilst at the same time facilitating effective software development practice.

Doctorial consortium presentations

Before the start of the workshop on Wednesday, a doctorial consortium session was held where students could share ideas with each other and discuss their work with more experienced (or seasoned) researchers.  This session was all about allowing students to share their key research questions with a wider audience.

Presentation slots were taken by Louis Major, Frazer McKay, Michael Berry, Alistair Stead, Cosmas Fonche and Rebecca Yates (my apologies if I've missed anyone!)  Other research students who were a part of the doctorial consortium included Teresa Busjahn, Melanie Coles, Gail Ollis, Mark Vinkovits, Kshitij Sharma, Tamara Lopez, Khurram Majeed and Edgar Cambranes.

Day 3: Tools and their evaluation and keynotes

Tools and their evaluation

The first presentation of the final day was by Thibault Raffaillac who presented his research, 'exploring the design of compiler feedback'.  I enjoyed this presentation since the feedback that software tools offer developers is fundamental to enabling them to do the job that they need to do.  A couple of questions that I've noted from Thibault's presentation included the question of 'who is the user?' (of the feedback), and what is their expertise.  Another note is that compilers (and other languages) always tend to give negative points and information.  It strikes me that languages offer an opportunity for programmers to interrogate a code-base.  Much food for thought!

Luis Marques Afonso gave the next talk, entitled 'evaluation application programming interfaces as communication artefacts'.  Understanding API usability has a relatively long history within the PPIG community.  The interesting aspect of Luis's work is that three different evaluation techniques were proposed:  semiotic inspection method (which I had never heard of before), cognitive dimensions of notations (Wikipedia) and discourse analysis (Wikipedia).  It was interesting to hear of these different methods - the advantage of using multiple approaches is that each method can expose different issues.

The final paper presentation, entitled 'sketching by programming in the choreographic language agent' was given by Luke Church, University of Cambridge.  Luke described working amongst a group of choreographers.  It was interesting to hear that the tool (or language) that had been created wasn't all about representing choreography, but instead potentially enabling choreographers to become inspired by the representations that were generated by the tool.  Luke's presentation created a lot of interest and debate.   

Keynote: extreme notation design

A computer programming language is a form of notation.  A notation is a system that can be used to represent ideas or actions and can be understood by people (such as music) or machines (as in computer programming), or both.  Thomas Green proposed a set of 'dimensions' or characteristics of notation systems which relate to how people can work with them.  These dimensions can be traded-off against each other depending upon the nature of the particular problem that is to be solved.

One challenge is: how can we understand the characteristic of trade-offs?  Alan Blackwell gave a keynote talk about a programming language that was controversially described as being a hybrid of Photoshop and Excel.

Palimpsest used the idea of different layers which could then contain different elements which could interact with each other (if I understand things correctly).  Methodologically speaking, the idea of creating a tool or a language that aims to explore the extremes of language design is an interesting and potentially very powerful one.  My understanding is that it allows the language designer to gain a wealth of experience, but also provides researchers with an example.  Perhaps there is an opportunity for someone to write a paper that compares and collates the different 'extremities' of language design.

Panel: coding and music

The final session of the workshop was all about programming, music and performance.  We were introduced to a phenomena called 'live coding', which is where programmers 'perform' music by writing software in front of a live audience. The three presentations which were contained within this final part of the day were all slightly different but all very connected.

Alex Mclean

Alex Mclean from the University of Leeds presented two demonstrations and talked about the challenges of live coding.  These included that manipulating and working with music through code is an indirect manipulation.  Syntactic glitches can interrupt the flow of performance and there is the possibility that being wrapped up within the code has the potential to detract from the music.

Live coders can also improvise with musicians who play 'non-programming language' (or 'real') instruments.  Since the notion of 'live' can have different meaning (and can depend on the abstractions that are contained within a language), challenges include the negotiation of time and harmony.  Delays can exist between the having a musical idea and realising it.

Alex mentioned Scheme Bricks, which has been inspired by Scratch (and Sense) which allows you to drag and drop portions of code together.  This also made me realise that if there are two live coders performing at the same time they might use entirely different 'instruments' (or notation systems) to each other. 

Thor Magnusson

Thor Magnusson from the University of Brighton introduced us to a language called ixi that has been derived from SuperCollider (Wikipedia).  Thor set out to make a language that could be understood by an audience.  To demonstrate this, Thor quickly coded a changing of drum and sound loops using a text editor using a notation that has come clear and direct connections to music notation.  Thor spoke of polyrhythms and code to change amplitude, to create harmonics and sound that is musically interesting. 

What I really liked was the metaphor of creating agents which 'play' fragments of code (or music).  Distortions can be applied to patterns and patterns can be nested within other patterns.  Thor also presented some compelling description of the situations in which the language is used; 'programming in a nightclub, late at night, maybe you've had a few beers; you're performing - you've got to make sure the comma is in the right place'.  For those who are interested, you can also see a video recording of Thor giving a live coding performance (YouTube).  In my notebook I have written something that Thor must have said: 'I see code as performance; live coding is a link between performance and improvisation'.

Sam Aaron

When Sam began his short talk, I couldn't believe my eyes - he was using a text editor called Emacs! (Wikipedia).  The last time I used Emacs was when I was a postgraduate student where it persistently confused me.  Emacs, however, uses a language called Lisp which is particularly useful for live coding, since it is a declarative language. 

During his talk Sam gives a brief introduction to Overtone.  You can see a video of a similar introduction to overtone through Vimeo.  One thing that did strike me was way in which aspects of music theory could be elegantly represented within code.

Discussion

This final part of the workshop gave way to quite a lot of energetic debate.  There appeared to be a difference between those who were thinking, 'why on earth would you want to do this stuff?' and, 'I think this stuff is really cool!'  When it comes to live coding there is the question of who is the user of the language - is it the performer, or is it the listener, or viewer (especially if a live coding notation is intended to be understandable by a non-musician-coder)?

But what of the motivations of the people who do all this cool stuff?  When it comes to performance there is the attraction of 'being in the moment', of using technology in an interesting and exciting way to creating something transitory that listeners might like to dance to.  It certainly strikes me that to do it well requires skill, time, persistence and musicality; all the qualities that 'traditional' musicians need.  Live coders can also face the fundamental challenge of keeping things going when things begin to sound a bit odd, to create new and creative code structure on-the fly, and an ability to move from one semi-improvised (by means of programming and musical abstraction) to another.

Other than the performance dimension, there is the intellectual attraction of changing and challenging people's perceptions of how software and programming languages are thought of.   Another dimension is the way that technology can give rise to a community of people who enjoy using different tools to create different styles of music.  All of the tools that were mentioned within the final part of the day are free and open source.  Free code, it can be said, can lead to free musical expression.

Reflections

Like other PPIG workshops this workshop had a great mix of formal presentations, more informal doctorial sessions mixed with many opportunities for discussion.  I think this was the first time that the workshop was held at London Metropolitan University.  Yanguo Jing, our local conference chair, did a fabulous job at ensuring that everything ran as smoothly as possible.  Yanguo also did a great job at editing the proceedings.  All in all, a very successful event and one that was expertly and skilfully organised.

There are two 'take home' points that have stuck in my mind.  The first is that programming languages need not only about programming machines; through their structures code can also be used as a way to gain inspiration for other endeavours, particularly artistic ones.  

The second point is that programming can be a performance, and one that can be fun too.  The music session with certainly stick in my mind for quite some time to come.  Programming performances are not just about music - they can be about education and creation; code can be used to present and share stories. 

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