The Code of Music - designing a handbook for interactive music coding

The Code of Music designing a handbook for interactive music coding Luisa Pereira ([email protected]) – Assistant Arts Professor / New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Interactive Telecommunications Program / Interactive Media Program (ITP/IMA) Introduction Developed in the pluralistic environment of NYU’s ITP/IMA program, The Code of Music emerges from a need to establish a common creative language among students from radically different musical, cultural, and technical backgrounds—a professional composer from Mexico just learning to code, an Indian software engineer new to music-making, an Armenian industrial designer exploring sound for the first time. The project is shaped by the ethos of the creative coding community—one that has successfully welcomed broader participation through tools like Processing and p5.js—but which still sees a narrower cross-section when it comes to music and sound. This talk introduces The Code of Music as both a pedagogical tool and publishing experiment, designed to expand access to music technology. Description This talk presents The Code of Music, an interactive handbook that teaches the fundamentals of music theory through code and interactivity, guiding readers to create their own expressive musical systems. Designed for the browser, the book combines concise explanations, interactive illustrations, and editable code examples—from audiovisual theremins and probabilistic drum machines to weather-responsive compositions. By engaging readers in building musical systems, the project aims to bridge the gap between introductory creative coding and musical thinking. I will share my pedagogical approach, the structure of the book, and the technical pipeline behind its dual-format publication as both a dynamic website and a printable book. Acknowledgments This book project is based on a class I have been teaching at NYU ITP/IMA for the last seven years. Biography Luisa Pereira Luisa Pereira is a Brazilian-Uruguayan artist and systems engineer based in New York. A composer of musical systems, she has created sculptural, immersive instruments, a series of intelligent synthesizers, and year-long, ever-evolving compositions that respond to the New York sky. Pereira has exhibited work widely, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago de Chile, the New Museum's art and technology incubator in New York, FILE in São Paulo, Loop 1 Summit in Berlin, and Bienal Kosice in Buenos Aires. Her work has been discussed in magazines like the New Yorker and Pitchfork, and art and technology blogs like Creators Project and Creative Applications. A frequent collaborator, she has created a range of boundary-pushing musical installations and experiments in New York City, working on projects by musicians like Björk, St. Vincent, Julianna Barwick and Little Dragon. Pereira is Assistant Arts Professor of Interactive Telecommunications at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. She has developed curricula for the NYC Department of Education and the Processing Foundation, and also taught in Shanghai, Berlin and Montevideo. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Attribution: owner/author(s). Web Audio Conference WAC-2025, November 19–21, 2025, Paris, France. © 2025 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). 2 The Code of Music designing a handbook for interactive music coding Luisa Pereira! Assistant Arts Professor, ITP/IMA! Tisch School of the Arts! New York University Creatability, online With Google Creative Labs Professional practice Edge of the Universe, New Museum Sky Room With Little Dragon and Samsung Kórsafn (Björk), Circumstance Synthesis (Julianna Barwick) Ace’s Sister City Hotel. Manhattan Commissioned by Microsoft Professional practice Creative practice Strings, with Monica Bate and Johann Diedrick Various venues in Brooklyn, Santiago de Chile, Ann Arbor and Half Moon Bay The Counterpointer Presented at the New Museum’s New Inc, Moogfest, Ableton Loop, NIME conference Creative practice Recent collaborations Oddkins perfomance ( Merche Blasco, Felicity Mangan) Silent Green, Berlin Remixing Tinikling by Adrian Bautista A reinterpretation of the traditional Philippines dance with colonial roots ITP NIME performance 2019 Teaching:! ITP/IMA student work 2. Demo thecodeofmusic.net * * the site is in active development, still behind a password. $ Sign up for the newsletter, and I’ll let you know when it’s public! Interactive illustrations Melody chapter: elements Interact Transform Generate Constrain: density Constrain: steps and leaps 1 step Abacus Synth by Elias Jarzombek ITP Thesis 2022 Student work Thank you [email protected] $ @luisa_ph!