Benoît and the Mandelbrots don’t play instruments – they write them, so to speak. In their ‘Live Coding Improvisation’, the laptop becomes a performative surface, live coding a sonic gesture. Source code appears, changes, disappears again, while the computer translates it into sound in real time. On stage at BLAUES RAUSCHEN, the quartet from Karlsruhe, named after mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, combines improvised software with situational listening: structures emerge, shift and reorganise themselves in dialogue with the space and the audience. Music here is an open process – fragile, precise, always in flux. The audience looks into the supposed black box (computer) and observes the intertwining of human creativity and machine logic.

Benoît and the Mandelbrots (Patrick Borgeat, Holger Ballweg, Juan A. Romero, Matthias Schneiderbanger) have been working at the interface of improvisation, software and sound research since 2009. Since each performance is unique, there are no fixed pieces, but rather collective real-time processes ranging from electronica and ambient to noise, drones and avant-garde. Over 90 concerts in Europe – many of them at algoraves, parties for algorithmic music with a strong focus on live performance and improvisation – an Honourable Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica 2012 (Digital Musics & Sound Art) and the self-titled double vinyl on the Syff label mark milestones in a practice that approaches programming as a musical act.