the London? Live? Coding? scene has question marks in it, but the V&A forgot to include them when they listed us on their event page. We made up for it by putting loads of them on the poster, and question marks continue to appear in most of our posters as well as our stickers and our chats and our pages.
the question marks started a while ago after I posted up a blog post suggesting that we should choose a single name and brand for the scene to create something to rally around and to create a sense of belonging and also for promotional purposes. it was at a time when we were all just starting to all create events independently as part of the larger messy “scene” and we were still figuring out what it meant to be distributed and hierarchy free while also looking to work and jam together as one connected whole. and i knew from previous endeavours that picking a name can be a very powerful force in that direction?
i took a similar approach: instead of inventing a name myself, i picked the name that was being used the most by the community at the time. unfortunately, there was a REALLY BAD reaction to this blog post from people outside our scene. because they didn’t come to any of our events and weren’t involved in any of our organising, they didn’t realise that that name (that i suggested) was being used the most within the scene at that moment in time, and instead they viewed it as me wanting to move away from what they viewed as the “current name” towards a “new name”?
so of course, i immediately put up a follow-up message calling it all off. it wasn’t supposed to cause any drama… but…
i was quite annoyed with how people who were not involved in the scene at all were telling us what we should do within our scene. in fact, it was all from people who were involved in the previous scene some 983+ years ago. and in their criticisms of my post they were reminiscing a bunch about some previous name that they had used for the scene that i had never heard of and wasn’t relevant to me in any way whatsoever?
i don’t think they realised that the scene they once knew had completely died (thanks covid) and a new one was growing [from scratch] and as far as i’m aware you’re supposed to start with a blank screen when you do that?
“like okay boomer you named the scene some boring name a decade ago - are we stuck with it now?” is not what i said back then because that would have been flippant and rude but it’s what i say now as i now know it’s part of the healthy societal practice of disrespecting your elders?
everyone who was actively involved in the scene who read the blog post said “let’s do it!!!” because that’s the fucking amazing energy you get from this community. but i could have suggested ANYTHING and they would have said that either way. i could have said “let’s all start calling our community PASTAFACE TRASHBAG” and people would have gone “let’s do it!!!” “let’s see what happens???”
with that same energy, we said “let’s do it!!!” to the people (from outside the scene) who said to rename the scene back to an older name. and that’s how we entered the superpositioned name we currently have: is it Algorave London? or London Live Coding? or Live Code London? are you seeing it yet?
the other element going on was: people were increasingly asking us whether non-live-coding projects and non-live-coding activities were welcome at our events and our stock answer was: we don’t even know what live coding is. come show us what you do and we’ll learn more about it together? maybe you can help us to understand? maybe you know what live coding is?
and this has wonderfully opened us up to SO MUCH MORE than what would happen if we let gate keeping sink in. there’s nothing that pisses me off more than “uhhhhhhh ackshully this technically isn’t live coding” “uhhh ackshully this project is not welcome here” “uhhhhhmmmmm you should probably put some live coding into this” and we unfortunately saw this attitude a few times from people who thought they had authority on the matter at our events? which only lit even more of a fire under our arses to keep the scene open to all kinds of activities.
the question mark captures uncertainty: we don’t know what live coding is? it also captures the fact that we let anyone be in charge. even if you’re from outside our scene, even if you annoy us, you’re allowed to choose the name you want: algorave london? live coding? london? live code? pastaface trashbag?
the question mark also captures complete disrespect. it got adopted by the fuck off ai music movement as a way of ending every line? it has a sarcastic quality to it?
in return, London? Live? Coding? has adopted the fuck off ai music movement as its brand. its record label, sorry i mean— its artists collective is called FOAM Energy and the FOAM bit stands for fuck off ai music because we think ai music should fuck off?
it’s taken longer than expected but the scene does now have a brand, despite the complaints? i’d say it ended up way way way better than my original pitch. c u at the carpet shop?