The algorithmic performer brings all the responsibilities outlined above together in her person. The challenge is to negotiate the different needs and intentions of each position towards the emergence of dialogic relationships on all synchronous levels. This act of balancing with the aim of creating dialogic spaces which allow for multiple simultaneous 'freedoms' to exist – that of the algorithmic performer, of the apparatus, of all other improvisers and of the audience – is the main responsibility in Dialogic Coding practice.
From this perspective responsible programming is a way to prepare the algorithmic agency for a particular performance situation by composing rules and constraints in algorithmic form within which improvised dialogues can take place. These acts of programming as preparation take place prior to the situation for which they are invented. It is very helpful if the programmer has a good imagination of this very situation in order to define the requirements of the interactions and design the apparatus' functionality accordingly. This includes an expectation of which 'languages', musical idioms, or gestures might be used for communication and how this may be best performed. The virtuosity in this process of designing algorithmic agency describes the thin line between predictable behaviour and alienating complexity. In other words such a dialogic programming preparation aims towards a minimum of prepared material but at the same time a maximal flexibility on how these prepared elements may be used and changed in the course of performance. The ability to access and change material as well as control structures can be viewed as belonging to the freedom of the programmer- performer as outlined above. Nevertheless, a preparation can only be a proposal which will be revised and discussed collectively in the improvised group
interaction. In any case a minimum of preparation is needed. Based on my practitioner experience it is hardly possible to participate in dialogic interaction on the intersubjective macro and meso levels without sounds or musical gestures to play ready-at-hand. On the other hand, the programmer needs to pay attention not to 'over-prepare'. This refers to situations in which the algorithmic structures are too fixed and inaccessible during performance so that they impose their own principles (e.g. in relation to harmonic texture, rhythm/pulse or timbre as well as the interaction) onto the group performance. My session experience in the
Drums'n'Algorhythms project may account for this. Consequently in the
development of my Dialogic Coding practice I have pursued a direction which puts change or 'change-ability' as its main goal. It may be understood from this point of view why the restriction on only working with the SuperCollider programming environment deemed feasible: Many other available software environments already come with assumptions about musical process and structure built into their algorithmic form. Each software obviously works best within the frame for which it was invented. SuperCollider as an open environment – not only for sound synthesis but also the design of control interactions – provides a flexible tool for the responsible programmer-performer to develop the algorithmic agency of the apparatus. From my practitioner's point of view, interested in dialogic learning processes, this outweighs the drawbacks80 of the unspecificity of the tool. A further reward may be that such a tool allows for the development of an individual, idiosyncratic approach to technology-based music performance based on the dynamically developing skills of the programmer. This provides a flexibility also in how the complexity of the programmed system may adapt to the growing expert knowledge of the programmer-performer. In addition to that every new performance situation will actually contribute to this learning process as well – as my methodological approach has revealed.
4.7. Summary
In this chapter I have described the different roles of a performer in Dialogic Coding practice. The combination of these potentially conflicting activities of listener, programmer, functionary and actor is one of the personal challenges which a performer needs to manage. This negotiation requires the ability to move
80See Blackwell and Collins (2005) for an analysis and comparison of several software environments for live laptop performance
fluently between the different perspectives and their respective languages of articulation and forms of interaction. I have highlighted, based on my own practice, how listening as well as programming, functioning and acting may be performed towards the emergence of dialogue. In particular, this requires the balancing of the intersubjective dialogic interactions in the improvising group against the dialogic interaction with the pseudo-autonomous apparatus. The possibility to re-program the apparatus establishes a particularly intricate 'double' responsibility: The programmer is responsible for programming a dialogic apparatus which only enables herself as functionary to interact dialogically in more direct ways. This all happens simultaneously to the group interaction. The actor carries here a responsibility to signify the dialogic interactions with the apparatus towards the outside (audience and group), while the listener is responsible for a general attention on all levels of interaction in any moment. I have provided examples of how this analysis has emerged from my practice. In the next chapter I will examine the reflexive qualities of the interaction in Dialogic Coding practice in order to see how it may produce transformations for the performer.