Live coding makes software strange (defamiliarization), letting us see beyond routine practices and assumptions of computational culture

The authors apply Viktor Shklovsky’s concept of ostranenie (defamiliarization / making strange) to live coding: by performing the usually invisible act of programming live and publicly, live coding disrupts the routine experience of software as invisible infrastructure. The smart paradigm in which computation becomes imperceptible is countered: when code is projected and being written, its constructed, contingent nature becomes apparent. This is framed against the background of interface design that makes computers disappear — what Olia Lialina identifies as the disappearance of both the computer and the user in contemporary UX ideology. Live coding restores the user as an active agent by making the construction of computational systems visible and participatory.

Examples

When a live coder writes s(“bd sd”) and the audience watches the sound emerge from the text, the usually hidden connection between code and sound becomes perceptible — the infrastructure is temporarily made strange rather than naturalized.

Assessment

Explain how live coding acts as defamiliarization using one specific feature of a typical live coding performance setup. Then identify one way in which live coding could fail to defamiliarize (become routine itself) and what would need to happen for it to maintain critical function.