Computation as material in live coding

摘要

In "live-coding" concerts, musicians interactively perform on stage, programming activities that dynamically drive audio synthesis systems; computer screens or dedicated video outputs are displayed for the audience to see what is being done. Betablocker is a simple, multithreaded virtual machine designed for live-coding music performance. Besides traditional computation opcodes, a NOTE instruction pops the machine stack and plays the current sample at the frequency specified by the popped value. Betablocker code can be overwritten at runtime, and all programs are executable by design and never stop. Metaphorically, Betablocker gives a glimpse of what computation sounds like.