(2024-07-09) Wilson Algorave

Lu Wilson: I went to an algorave.vI’ve been trying to express myself with code for a while.

I build tools for myself that let me— allow me to be creative— to express myself. It started with sandpond and it led to arroost and the tadi web and torn leaf and other stuff and it might lead to more, who knows.

Through this struggle, I have seen myself change throughout— as my situation changes around me. I now sound different, and I look different, and I act different, and I still don’t know what I want or who I am, but I am learning to—

“If I just figure out how to express myself fully, then I’ll finally know who I am.”

At some point, I started to realise that I was very wrong.

It wasn’t the “finishing” that was important on that creative journey. It was— the journey

I realised that it’s important to share the imperfect process behind creation, even if it sucks— especially if it sucks, because it’s the most important bit. And you see me doing that here with these dashes that I— that indicate where I have changed my mind. I don’t backspace, I dash instead. (thinking out loud)

I call it “sharing scrappy fiddles”.

I think that it’s morally important— important, in a moral sense— that we normalise sharing scrappy fiddles

My quest towards normalising sharing scrappy fiddles led me to create a tool called arrow— roost— arroost.

Arroost helps you create— express yourself through music because it’s really complicated— opaque and difficult to use.

the main thing is that you can make sounds in it and when you hear those sounds coming back to you it sounds— it feels like those sounds don’t come from you really— it feels like those sounds come from arroost.

So it takes responsibility away from you.

the whole point is that you’re here to make some sounds not to have made some sounds.

Live coding

I didn’t set out to make a live coding tool, but I guess I— I did

There were people at that event who told me this— that arroost is live coding, and they invited me to come along to their live coding meetups.

I learned about Laurie Spiegel and Algorave and how live coding gets sometimes squeezed out of more “serious” (read: stupid) academic spaces for stupid reasons

I sometimes struggle to “find my people” in a way. I enjoy— relate to different parts— aspects of different communities. And I find myself taking part in lots of different ones, but feeling home in none. This is not unique to me— this is not rare. Quite the opposite, in fact. In fact, I’m pretty sure that this is the most common experience that people experience

All the while, I was grappling with my own place in wider communities— fields. All around me, I felt the pressure to specialise. Do I go down the research path? or art? or engineering? or content? or—

Activism

I went on a march recently.

The march itself was special because it was a combined effort of different groups that normally don’t work together. Direct action groups like Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil teamed up with more traditional organisations like WWF and The Wildlife Trusts, also known as “the old guard”.

I haven’t thought about it as “activism” as such. Maybe “satire”, but definitely not “activism”, but now I’m questioning that.

What would it look like if I fully embrace my style— if I “go all the way” with what I do— go further than I have before, and advocate for myself and others, while also combining it— blending it with everything else? Art, comedy, satire, content, research, activism, community. What would it look like for me to fully embrace that? and “go all the way”?

Building community

Meanwhile, I was asking every researcher I could find— I was asking the same question to every researcher I could find. “Is your work about influencing people? or is it about solving hard problems?” (R and D)

I wrote it up in my write up, but I found most answers unsatisfying. The one that impacted me most was Alex McLean’s reply on mastodon afterwards (remember him from earlier?). He says that the important thing is: “Making space for community, and getting the conditions right so the community then grows itself. I think to really align with this approach it’s good to stop talking about making tools for people. I think tools are much more limited than languages or environments.”

London coding scene

The London coding scene is a mixture of many blended communities

Time passed, and— it’s gone full circle

And I originally discovered the Future of Coding through Steve Ruiz, my current boss. Steve is known for his “build in public” (working in public) style, that he has shared on twitter for a long time. And no one does it as well as Steve— to the extent that Steve does it. It feels like an extension of an art practice. It’s normalise sharing scrappy fiddles through and through

*And of course, I work at tldraw now, Steve’s company. Things have blended together.

My work at tldraw continues to be about making things and sharing the process, live— in realtime, with my colleague Orion Reed.*

In all of these events, there is a culture of scrappy process sharing. Maggie Appleton has put in monumental effort and leadership in creating that culture at London’s Future of Coding meetups. The emphasis is on the scrappy “seven minute demo”, which she has written about on her wikiblogarden. You should read it.

Algorave

I went to an algorave and it changed me forever. It’s where live coding happens and where people dance to visuals and music.

Alex McLean stopped the music partway through his set. “We’re going to do some maths” is what he said (or something like that). And then he broke down what he was doing— how the algorithm was working. He got the audience to join in. And I watched an already engaged audience became even more engaged.

Algorave is often described as a back and forth between the coders and the crowd.

Building on the past

That night felt special to me, but I guess it didn’t come out of nowhere. It came from— “We love repetition” is a repeated tagline of Algorave. So I asked Alex McLean where it came from, because I guess it didn’t come out of nowhere. It came from— When I was a (failing) student the first time around in the 90s, I came up with “MDMA generation, we love repetition” as a joke

For me though, “algorave generation, we love repetition” as a statement sits in the context of UK university computer music departments around 2010, with their institutionalised electroacoustic music culture where virtuosity is all about the number of genelec speakers in your multichannel array, and where repetition was regarded more or less as pure evil. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of this guy Theodor Adorno but for some reason he’s taken seriously by music academics despite every quote I’ve read from him coming across as unhinged…

Arroost from the perspective of live coding

Arroost is a live coding tool, and it leans into a lot of the same themes and values as— but it differs in some ways.

, which tries to take responsibility away from you

And Arroost places much more emphasis on voice. You have to record all the sounds yourself, with whatever you can, and the easiest thing is often your own voice

More and more, I am trying to build a cult— I mean— ha(!)— a community. (scene)

The stream would have been nothing without people turning up, and contributing. It was a back and forth between me and the “crowd”.

For me, it was an exploration of what it feels like to change.

it made me think of how I have changed in these last few years especially

Through making things— expressing myself, I change. My change is reflected in my work. It has a moving target and it never quite gets there. And my work bounces back at me, and it changes me in return.

If you ever do— ever get to the end of an artistic project, you end up with an artifact. But that artifact is not the project and the project is not the artifact

The process is the point! That’s the human part! That’s why we’re here! To share our journeys and struggles with each other!