If livecoding is one of the most emblematic artistic manifestations of FLOSS, hacklabs have become one of its most emblematic social forms. While the two may not occupy identical trajectories, they nevertheless overlap and compliment one another in many significant ways. Central to this is their shared principle of ‘enabling the possibility of production by others'. This is an issue of distribution, not simply at the level of product, in the way a piece of software can be easily distributed for example, but at the level of practice. The practice itself is inherently distributive, for it integrates the distribution of knowledge on how to produce into that which it produces. While this allows for possibilities of collaborative production, it should be seen as distinct from collaboration in itself. For whereas a practice that is collaborative coheres the production of many under a single goal, thereby directing the disposition of their labour, a practice that is distributive enables the disposition of labour by others under their own direction. This is enabled in the output of production as notation, as code that not only creates a product, but enters into an active life beyond its initial implementation.
The conflicts within the Scratch Orchestra and the conflicts between Free Software and Open Source illustrate the distinctions within forms of production between those that are collective and distributive, and those that are collaborative and acquisitive. A distributive practice enables the disposition of labour by others under their own direction, while an acquisitive one accumulates the labour of others without regard to their self-disposition. It also exposes the conflict that can emerge when a practice that has developed within a self-constituting community becomes subject to external forms of constitution and legitimation. Not all collaboration is inherently distributive, therefore. The nature of the power relations within it, and the disposition and legitimation of production they enable, may be subject to forces that operate in opposing ways.
The significance of groups such as the Scratch Orchestra in the late 1960s to the emergence, nearly 40 years later, of livecoding may be related to the changes in the general forms of production that have taken place during this time. At a time when the ‘information economy' was still emerging, and the tools and conceptual frameworks that have underpinned it were still embryonic, projects like the Scratch Orchestra and LOGO Labs were attempts at creating an emancipatory trajectory with the resources and knowledge available. Now, we are in an era in which the ‘information economy' has become more consolidated and its distinctive modes of production are more established and pervasive. As Martin Hardie argues, it is UNIX, with its networked, distributed filesystem, that created the basic notational inscription for these modes of production. Notational production itself has become a core element of contemporary production and consumption, with the masses involved in ways Cardew may never have foreseen nor wished for. Every aspect of our lives is notated to a degree not previously known and we are constantly challenged by new scores and scripts that we must perform in order to complete even the most mediocre task. It is through such notation that immaterial labour is valorised and managed, and through which we are drawn into collaboration with the very processes of production it inscribes. Indeed, such collaboration has become the dominant paradigm both of managerial control and everyday consumption as exemplified in the proliferation of highly ‘personalised' products and services, reality entertainment, and the social networks of Web 2.0. This form of collaboration, however, is one constructed through mechanisms that are acquisitive rather than distributive. Through this the factory as a single coherent unit of production has given way to amorphous networked systems. To some extent these developments are paralleled in the shift from groups with a relatively stable membership like the Scratch Orchestra and Art Ensemble of Chicago, to more loosely connected groups and individuals that are characteristic of the FLOSS-related arts scene. Similarly, practices that might once have been contained within one group, such as scratch music composition, have become increasingly disseminated and pervasive, with online code repositories replacing the circulation of scratch books and collaboration within artistic practice valorised to a greater extent than ever before, and sometimes merely as an end in itself. This reflects the intersections and conflicts between dominant and resistant practices that characterise the dialectical nature of production in general. If livecoding is emblematic of a new emancipatory trajectory emerging within this dialectic, then there is much to be gained from re-examining the problems of notation and the politics of notational production as experienced and worked though by those who previously brought the code on stage.