From Blank Canvas to Playback. Free Improvisation Models in Technological Art

Abstract

Live Coding, Live Cinema or different approaches to digital audiovisual performance are proposed as new forms of creation based on free improvisation. This implies the use of dig-ital tools that allow the performative practice in front of the audience, specialized software and audiovisual programming systems that have been developed recently for this purpose. These practices try to show the public the content building mechanisms subjacent to dig-ital systems. Desire to get into a creative process from scratch showing the whole process contradicts the need of establishing safe mechanisms to solve the technical constrictions. We will use the concept of the blank canvas, with its problematic issues about the creative blockade, to analyse these artistic practices in the new media and to show the contradic-tions and fictions that lie behind this model of creation based on free improvisation from scratch in public view