Will be presented at:
If we were to look at how often lines from the TOPLAP Draft manifesto appear on conference slides, to judge incisiveness by incidence, the part about the algorithms and the chainsaws — "Algorithms are thoughts. Chainsaws are tools." — might appear to be the key to understanding the medium. And so it may be. But if we scroll down a little, to the final acknowledgement, we can discover there another word that serves as a perspective into live code and reveals another fruitful aspect: continuum. Not only is continuity a vital attribute of live performance, but it also is an aspect that is particularly salient for conceptualizing visuals performance. Historically, analog video synthesis is a medium facilitated by video's continuous nature. Today, in the face of memoryless graphics buffers, continuity moves into the functions that generate the visuals themselves. Navigating the space between these two modes can become productive in itself. This paper then considers continuity as an indicative category in a few positions: It covers historical continuity in analog video as a context for live code and methods for continuity in a live performance. It discusses the possibility that continuity may be a dimension of virtuosity within live code performance. Finally, it discusses briefly how a focus on continuity as a strategy is one way to bring the vitality of liveness into a studio practice.