nnirror: livecoding && glitches
nnirror (pronounced “nearer”) draws us in to his musics as we gather around the sounds of his live coding set at Elastic Arts in Chicago. his laptop screen illuminates him. he is the foreground. his HDMI output projects his screen behind him. we watch his screen fill the background as he beautifully improvises abstract electronics.
nnirror performs the codes of open-source software for all of us to see. this is livecoding in 2025. new approaches to experimental electronic musics that both combines && innovates on all of its many hystories. on the screen && projection appear variables wit names like ‘metallic’ && ‘ghost_voice.’ he processes signals through these variables && his analog systems. he pushes, nuances, and navigates a soundscape of his own making, made from code programmed live in realtime. we are encoded, inside the moment.
step back, shift your view, and it becomes clear that this is a crucial kind of expertise in crafting digital musics. ‘performing’ the programming or authoring software in realtime is a special kind musical ‘mastery.’ what we traditionally call ‘mastery’ in music has long been associated wit human hands. people visibly manipulate handmade instruments. we see their hands moving across guitars && pianos. to ‘play’ these instruments is to ‘show your hand’. to pluck the strings && strike the keys, displays the human hand at work.
electronics and compute powers have always been more ‘mysterious.’ the ‘magic’ of these machines relies on the unseen. we do not know what they do on the inside. even experts have had to concede to the magic && mysteries of glitches since the 1960s. when musicians play these systems we also can’t ‘see’ what the human musicians are ‘doing,’ especially when they are at their laptops. the processes become dramatically less visible than classical instrumentation. this kind of ‘invisibility’ can be countered by showing the interiors, hidden layers, and substrates.
livecoding shifts this relation. by projecting code, musicians reveal their processes in realtime. the hands of the musician become newly visible on screen in keystrokes and code segments. we see them thinking in codes, creating musics by crafting && manipulating instruction sets. those of us who make computational / computer / digital / laptop musics know this situation well. we appreciate how livecoding && glitch approaches can question or even demystify a digital process.
when we see their screens projected, livecoding musicians show && share their immediate experience as they create their musics. their performances can become more tangible && understandable. many Glitch Art techniques (+ my earlier Dirty New Media styles) similarly uncover technologies wit which they are made. like a stage magic show unmasked we can see ‘how the music is made’ even when we do not speak the programming languages themselves. we still see && hear the sonic events unfold in the moment of their making.
the movement of many possibilities shapes the musics of nnirror && improvisation is key to understanding the flexibility that livecoding makes possible. as a sonic event occurs && catches his attn, nnirror moves wit it, into new sounds. he also shows us his structure, annotated in his commented code, written on screen. his interface is projected for us all to see, so that you can say he is: playing the computer-interface-as-a-musical-environment. he also embraces the glitches when he encounters the unexpected, as he tells me after his set. nnirror knows that these moments of surprise draw us even ‘nearer’ on nnirror’s musical journey, livecoded, and alive in realtime.
— jonCates, Chicago, Monday Musics series, 20250908
nnirror’s Performance at Elastic Arts in Chicago ➝
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNFpN5mHxEQ
nnirror’s Youtube channel ➝
https://www.youtube.com/@nnirror
nnirror’s Github ➝
https://gist.github.com/nnirror
