Fieldcoding is an ongoing project about live coding with incidental sounds “en plein air”, exploring the soundscapes of various locations through the lens of live coding and extended microphone techniques.
It draws inspiration from more traditional field recording practices, especially in the use of microphones, and improvisational live coding techniques, which are used to process the sound in a spontaneous fashion.
The project started in 2021 originally as some kind of acoustic postcard I sent to friends while I was visiting friends & family in Maine, but quickly became its own thing, with further iterations recorded in Maine, in my hometown in Germany, on my terrace in Barcelona, and in the Soča valley in Slovenia, where the project has been developed further as part of PIFCamp 2022 and has been mentioned in the article Live Coding Outside, Live Coding Inside: Listening, participation and walking by Hernani Villaseñor-Ramírez, in the August 2023 issue of Organised Sound.
So why do I want to bring a computer into beautiful landscapes (or soundscapes), when plenty of people nowadays talk about "digital detox", and want to get into nature to get away from computers? One of my central thoughts on it:
“In the end, the computer is an extension of ourselves, so bringing it to natural environments isn’t an attempt to ‘technologize’ nature, but just bringing our extended eyes, ears, and mind with us, even if it can sometimes present a logistical challenge. So in the end it’s not an attempt to bring technology to nature, but to bring ourselves, we who are cyborgs (as Andy Clark put it). In that sense, it’s not even an attempt at ‘reconciliation’ of nature and technology, if we don’t accept the split between us, nature, and technology. Technology is (or rather, can or should be) an extension of ourselves, and we are part of nature, anyway.”
One instance has been premiered at the remote ICLC 2021:
The others can be found here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/10083332
(back)