Behind The Screens: Kate Sicchio
An interview with choreographer and media artist Kate Sicchio.
Kate Sicchio is a choreographer and media artist who makes dance with code and performs in a live code band (Codie). In this interview, we’d like to talk about her practices and tools, as well as work in the community and her upcoming activities.
What is live coding, what does it mean to you? How has it influenced your practice of making and thinking about art?
For me live coding is about process, about the changing rules of a performance score and about using algorithms as a way to produce something new or unexpected. In my practice it is also collaborative and a way of making work with others.
Could you tell us what your first encounter with live coding was and what your sources of inspiration are?
I started live coding choreography before I knew what live coding was. I had been working with the first generation of Kinect cameras for a project and got really interested in the idea of hacking as a way of repurposing or changing something. I started to consider how I could hack choreography — but not just as a practice for generating a dance in the studio, how could I hack and change the dance while it was being performed on stage. I created a pseudo-code to give performers instructions and change them while they were performing. This code was projected during the performance for the audience to see. After these initial performances I met Alex McLean for the first time and explained what I had been working on. He was the one who told me that what I was doing had a name and it was called live coding.
After several years in the live coding community, I decided I wanted to perform at Algoraves which was difficult with the work I had been creating for the stage. I asked my friend Sarah Groff Hennigh-Palermo to code visuals while I coded sound and our band Codie was born. We later invited Melody Loveless to join us.
What inspires my work is the layering and folding of technology with live performance. I am always asking myself how technology can change dance but also how dance can change or develop technology.
Do you have any preferred platforms and/or languages, how did you come to use them and do you have a specific reason for it?
With Codie I use Sonic Pi and Troop to collaborate on our sound. I started using Sonic Pi when I was teaching middle schoolers creative technology. I always appreciated the fact that it is a coding environment that could easily transfer from the classroom to the club.
Are there any platforms, tools, libraries or other extensions you have developed yourself and if so can you elaborate on why and for what purpose?
For my choreographic works I have developed many tools to create different kinds of scores for live coding dance works. Each tool is associated with a particular piece of choreography where that new tool or language is explored. It has become part of the process of making work for me, with each piece leading to new techniques to try.
‘Hacking Choreography’ was a pseudo code I created. ‘Hacking Choreography 2.0’ was a custom system created with Nick Rothwell using Clojure to live code a textual score. ‘Vibe Shirt’ used live coded haptic feedback embedded in a shirt. ‘Body Code <> Sound Choreographer’ was a collaborative piece with Alex McLean where we created a system with feedback loops between our code. ‘Moving Patterns’ was a library for patterning images in Tidalcyles developed with Tom Murphy. ‘Terpsicode’ pushed this idea further by using dance terminology to create a programming language that codes a visual score. ‘Studio//Stage’ is a JSolang in the Estuary environment specifically made to create screen dance work.
One of my aims with the choreographic programming languages I have developed is to be able to communicate with my computer like I do dancers in the studio. I want to have expressions that make sense for dance composition and can develop the movement I am thinking about without a lot of extra cognition spent translating that into another language.
Are you part of a (local) community? How do you organize and do you share works or collaborate often?
I co-founded LiveCodeNYC in 2015 when I was living in Brooklyn. We organized regular meet-ups where the only rule was to set a date for the next meet up. We slowly started organizing Algoraves and other performances around New York. Since then I have moved to Richmond, Virginia, but organizing has halted due to the pandemic.
In what forms are algorithms and randomness applied in your practice or performance? Do you try to pursue serendipity and how or why not?
I love algorithms and randomness! I think using sets of rules to develop a structure and see what develops is an exciting part of the creative process. They force you to rethink habits, find new pathways and make different choices.
Someone once asked me why any of my work had to be on the computer and why didn’t I just use pseudo code for all of my scores for dancers. But the computer adds these possibilities. With randomness it really is the computer making a choice for you and then you have the job of reacting to that, performing with or against, or typing new code and trying again.
My live coding performances center on improvisation. While the systems have constraints there is still a lot of agency for performers in the work. Dancers are exploring movement, they are not being controlled by the coder.
Do you have any recommendations for people who have not gotten into live/creative coding but are curious to give it a try?
I think there is an assumption you have to ‘learn to program’ before you create or perform but this is not true. I am continually learning as I go and figuring out what programming is. As an artist I find computer science a rich area to explore and use to make art and that’s more important than being a coding expert. So my advice is try it no matter how little you think you know.
Could you share a sneak-peek into an upcoming project or something you are currently working on and very excited about?
I am currently collaborating with David Ogborn on a new live coding language for choreographing 3D avatars within the Estuary environment. It is a very exciting project in terms of being able to create new possible algorithmic movement and networked performance. My previous works focus a lot on composition and patterns of gesture but this language will allow you to actually create the gesture or build it from an existing animation. It is full of new possibilities for making choreography with code.
April 1–13 Kate Sicchio, Sarah Groff Hennigh-Palermo, and Melody Loveless are hosting alone | together, a Codie Gallery show.
Is there anything we did not ask about but you would really like to share with the readers?
There’s so much more potential for live coding outside sound and visuals and I hope as a community we continue to push to continue exploring live coding as a methodology for creating, rather than simply a genre of electronic music.
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This article is part of the Behind The Screens series of Creative Coding Utrecht — a series of events where digital artists and live coders create a piece in ten minutes.
Watch Season 1 // Watch season 2 // More interviews
The Behind The Screens series is suppported by Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industries and Gemeente Utrecht.
