Abstract

Cyber-physical programming (CPP) is a programming discipline which emphasises the cyber-physical relationship between the programmer, the machine, and the environment. A Cyber-physical feedback system guided by the programmers perceptual experience of the world in an evolving relationship with, and through, the machine. Within the context of cyber-physical programming this relationship is abstract in nature shifting the focus of the real-time activity from a direct gestural interactivity to a form of procedural orchestration.

Cyber-physical programming peruses the notion of livecoding within the domain of real-time distributed systems. As an alternative man-machine interaction model this talk proposes a cyber-physical programming model, with a human operator orchestrating a distributed network of sensor rich, semi-autonomous, real-time processes. Cyber-physical programming broadens the “livecoding” context to explicitly include real-time distributed systems theory and practice.

This talk will present Cyber-physical programming and discuss ways in which this broadening of the standard audiovisual practice of livecoding effects both user interaction and systems design. Extempore and Impromptu will be used as case studies to discuss the impact of these ideas on the authors approach to design and practice.