From Lick the Toad to Craft the Code

As in the era of Ars Nova which provided the platform for composers’ exploration of rhythmical representation, (mobile) technology-mediated audience participation is now baby booming due to the rapid discourse of the web-based technologies open to any layman who is interested in the field of innovative music-making. Expanding on the main focus of this paper, that is, technology mediated audience interaction during live coding, networked capabilities in music systems can provide the means for realizing projects that empower audience interaction in live coding performances. Lick the Toad is a custom-made system developed using web technologies and it was built to provide a platform for interaction between members of the audience and performer(s) enabling an ongoing dialogue between individual sound nodes generated by users’ devices and live coders as a means to govern the decisions of the coding procedure. To enhance variability of sonic events amongst the users the system uses a neural network model trained using input generated by the users. This is a ready-to-use sound-making interface that can generate sound out of the box while engaging in a bidirectional communication using Open Sound Control (OSC) messages that are shared to an accompanying live coding interface environment built in SuperCollider for this purpose. A demonstration of the project and its creative outputs are provided in the paper as well as an analysis of a musical performance which was created using this system.