Alex McLean (born 1975) is a British musician and researcher. He is notable for his key role in developing

live coding Live coding, sometimes referred to as on-the-fly programming,Wang G. & Cook P. (2004"On-the-fly Programming: Using Code as an Expressive Musical Instrument" In ''Proceedings of the 2004 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expr ...

as a musical practice, including for creating

TidalCycles TidalCycles (also known as "Tidal") is a live coding environment designed for musical improvisation and composition. In particular, it is a domain-specific language embedded in Haskell, focused on the generation and manipulation of audible or visu ...

, a live-coding environment that allows programmer musicians to code simply and quickly, and for coining the term

Algorave An algorave (from an algorithm and rave) is an event where people dance to music generated from algorithms, often using live coding techniques. Alex McLean of Slub and Nick Collins coined the word "algorave" in 2011, and the first event under su ...

with

Nick Collins Nicholas Cordell Collins (born August 16, 1983) is a former American football safety who played seven seasons for the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Bethune-Cookman, and was drafted by ...

. He is an active and influential member of the

community; he is a co-founder of TOPLAP and joint leader of the Live Coding Research Network. Alex is co-founder of the Chordpunch record label McLean is also known for his work in

software art Software art is a work of art where the creation of software, or concepts from software, play an important role; for example software applications which were created by artists and which were intended as artworks. As an artistic discipline software ...

, winning the

Transmediale Transmediale, stylised as transmediale is an annual festival for art and digital culture in Berlin, usually held over five days at the end of January and the beginning of February. Transmediale takes the form of a conference (sometimes called ...

award for software art in 2002 for ''forkbomb.pl'', a short Perl script which creates a unique image from an operating system under heavy load, and co-founding the runme.org software art repository with Olga Goriunova, Amy Alexander and

Alexei Shulgin Alexei Shulgin (russian: Алексей Шульгин; born 1963 in Moscow) is a Russian born contemporary artist, musician, and online curator. Working out of Moscow and Helsinki, Shulgin established the Immediate Photography Group in 1988 an ...

in 2003, which received an honorary mention in the Prix

Ars Electronica Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in the ...

netvision category in 2004. Alex McLean performs as a solo artist under the moniker Yaxu and is also a member of the live coding bands Slub and

Canute Cnut (; ang, Cnut cyning; non, Knútr inn ríki ; or , no, Knut den mektige, sv, Knut den Store. died 12 November 1035), also known as Cnut the Great and Canute, was King of England from 1016, King of Denmark from 1018, and King of Norway ...

. He has also collaborated with Kate Sicchio in combining live coding and live choreography. During 2016, McLean was sound artist in residence at the

Open Data Institute The Open Data Institute (ODI) is a non-profit private company limited by guarantee, based in the United Kingdom. Founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt in 2012, the ODI’s mission is to connect, equip and inspire people around th ...

, as part of the

Sound and Music Sound and Music is the UK's national agency for new music, established on 1 October 2008 from the merger of four existing bodies working in the contemporary music field: the Society for the Promotion of New Music (SPNM), the British Music Inform ...

embedded programme.

Discography

EPs

* ''Peak Cut'' (Computer Club; 30 March 2015) * ''Broken'' (Chordpunch; 2011)

References

External links

Official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:McLean, Alex British male musicians Algorave 1975 births Living people UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship