Presentation at ICLC2025 - May 28, 2025

15 Aug 2025 by Anna Xambó

Photo by Santiago Botero (UOC, ICLC 2025)

Screenshot of the Sensing the Forest live-coding session.

The International Conference on Live Coding (ICLC) 2025 was held in Barcelona, May 27-31, 2025. ICLC is dedicated to practices and research focused on technologies and philosophies that interpret the use of computer code as gesture within the context of live performances. The theme of the conference was “liveness” with an invitation to the community to reflect on liveness and its many forms and consequences within live coding.

The Sensing the Forest project has been present at ICLC2025 in two acts:

Xambó, Anna (May 28, 2025). Keynote: Liveness as an Open Work: An Ongoing Live-Coding Algorithmic Journey, 9th International Conference on Live Coding (ICLC2025), Barcelona, 27 May 2025 - 31 May 2025, Spain.

Abstract: This talk will present a personal journey reflecting on liveness that started in the early days of live coding in Barcelona as part of a community of makers connected to an international network of DIY artist-coders. Narrated as an open and undetermined work, this presentation will discuss liveness through examples that move from physical to digital places, from tangible to intangible matter, and from human to non-human actors. The attempt will be to understand the role of liveness in live coding in a century of exponential growth and complexity.

Xambó, Anna (May 29, 2025): Sensing the Alice Holt Forest, live performance. 9th International Conference on Live Coding (ICLC2025), Barcelona, 27 May 2025 - 31 May 2025, Spain.

Program notes: This data-driven live coding performance explores natural soundscape recordings from the Alice Holt Forest, UK, captured continuously over the course of a year via a custom-built audio streamer and uploaded to the Freesound database. The central enquiry is whether patterns in forest soundscapes can be linked to climate change, using acoustic ecology and live coding to highlight their interconnection. Are species’ sounds diminishing? Do environmental noises dominate? Are there other acoustic markers tied to climate shifts? The performance uses MIRLCa, a self-developed SuperCollider extension that combines AI and music information retrieval (MIR) techniques to retrieve and manipulate sounds from Freesound in real time.