In this paper, we situate the practice of live coding as an articulation of critical media. This critical practice involves the real-time use of programming languages to address a range of creative challenges and communicative strategies through tactical improvisation. Despite its roots in the early 2000s, we observe that live coding remains a marginal creative practice. The literature on alternative media presents various modes of digital critical practice, including hacktivism, culture jamming, and others, yet live coding has received very little attention within this field. As a performance-based musical practice, algorave is a social movement centred on the performance of electronic music that re-centres human agency within an assemblage of sociotechnical relations. This critical practice challenges the logic of automation and generative AI by demanding human creativity and competence towards the creation of soundscapes. The nature of live coding decenters the use of programming away from its common institutionalized associations, particularly with neoliberal, STEM-based careers and education. Instead, live coding functions as a participatory practice to empower, subvert, resist, and transcend sociotechnical constraints. We see live coding providing experimental, experiential and pragmatic possibilities for marginalized and Global South contexts through a radical reframing of creative technologies which originate from the Global North. Our work highlights cases of live coding through algorave across Asian contexts.
Keywords: live coding, critical media, algorave, alternative media, global south