Live Performance Music (Live Coding)

We are in a technological shift to deeply question the structural and formal boundaries of music through all the definitions it entails. Considering the possibilities that the rapidly developing technology provides to the contemporary artists in the field of creativity, the conceptual and functional definition of the musician must be reconsidered with the contribution of the technological developments. Musicians who can adapt themselves to current climate of rapid changing conditions, tend to expose performances that are focused on more audio and visual materials than in the past. In the hands of technology, sound which is formally the basic building block of music, can easily be transformed into various forms while the image brings itself forward to exist with it at every opportunity, and the musician can play a vital role in this change. While the musician's journey of becoming him/herself is traditionally based on focusing academic theories and conceptions, today it is also shaped by the individual contribution of experimentation following the widespread possibilities of technological opportunities. The musician can easily access many musical instruments in the virtual environment while he/she is able to produce various compositions at the same time and can incorporate different production methods such as composing music with algorithm, live music coding, sound synthesis, sound sampling and sound synchronization with image. In an era where variety of contemporary musical forms exist, how should we depict sound and image components as being the main arteries of musical performances? How should we define the role of a musician who is utilizing technological instruments to constitute sound and image focused art pieces in terms of artistic performances? RAW is an Istanbul based live coding duo creating Audio Visual Performances. Performances are composed of improvisational sonic structures accompanied with pre-programmed interactive visual materials. Visuals have been developed with core programming environments and various generative visual manipulations occur with data received from sound to interact with. Furthermore, RAW invites the audience to immerse into the performance visually with using additional top cameras, and code views projected on large displays. Sonically the audial experience moves into the fields of noise, electronic, techno, minimal and ambient genres with improvisational forms.