The TOPLAP manifesto demands code visibility, algorithmic insight, and rejects obscurantism — and was always intended as a draft

The TOPLAP (Transnational Organisation for the Promotion of Live Algorithm Programming) manifesto was drafted at the Changing Grammars symposium in Hamburg in February 2004 and has only ever been published as a draft. Key demands include: give access to the performer’s mind; Obscurantism is dangerous. Show us your screens; programs are instruments that can change themselves; code should be seen as well as heard. It acknowledges that a lay audience need not understand code to appreciate it (as with guitar appreciation), and prefers insight into algorithms over safety nets. The assertive manifesto style is deliberately parodic and tongue-in-cheek, following a tradition of technology manifestos, but it had real ambition. Being permanently a draft reflects live coding’s resistance to fixed definitions.

Examples

The manifesto phrase Live coding is not about tools. Algorithms are thoughts. Chainsaws are tools has become a scene meme, reproduced as stickers and quoted at algoraves worldwide.

Assessment

List two specific things the TOPLAP manifesto demands and two things it acknowledges. Explain why the fact that it is permanently a draft is consistent with live coding’s core philosophy.