Stirring Up Pea Stew: A Networked Feedback Structure for Live Coding

This poster discusses Pea Stew, a musical work that consists of a wireless meshed audio network including an arbitrary number of laptop performers, and a structure for improvisation using live coding techniques. Pea Stew draws upon various precedents in ‘feedback music’, most notably Nicolas Collins’ classic analogue work Pea Soup, but also Atau Tanaka and Kasper Toeplitz’s Global String, David Tudor’s Rainforest pieces, and Toshimaru Nakamura’s ‘No-input Mixing Board’, amongst others. Using a design initially developed by Wilson, ongoing development of the piece has taken place during workshop sessions with the Birmingham Ensemble for Electroacoustic Research. Once seeded with noise, performers use live coding techniques to intervene in the signal chain. The result is collectively produced, and indeterminate: While every change has an effect, the system is too complicated to allow for the result to be predictable.