In live coding the human is the unambiguous creative agent; in generative art authorship is shared with the autonomous process

McLean’s key distinction: generative art deploys autonomous processes (‘seeds’) that run without ongoing human intervention — authorship becomes a philosophical question. Live coding keeps the human visibly, continuously involved: every musical change is caused by a programmer’s edit. ‘With live coding there is no question, the programmer very visibly provides all the rules.’ This is not just aesthetics but epistemology: live coding rejects the generative art framing where the computer might be deemed the creative agent. The audience’s ability to see the code being written is what makes agency visible.

Examples

Brian Eno’s ‘Music for Airports’ (seed + ambient process) versus a Slub live set (constant programmer intervention). Live coding audiences can see: this sound changed because that line of code changed.

Assessment

McLean claims that with live coding ‘there is no question’ about human agency. A critic responds: ‘but the programmer still cannot predict what the algorithm will produce.’ How does McLean’s account handle this objection using the bricolage framework?