I was happy to meet linguist Wataru Uegaki at a research ‘crucible’ event connected with my fellowship (we are both on the same programme), and we are now collaborating on exploring connections between linguistics, and live coding in arts performance. We already held a very fun workshop with the young musicians of North Edinburgh in collaboration with Tinderbox Collective – a report on that to follow! The next step is to engage adult researchers and practitioners in approaching the topic.
We conceived this initial research workshop as small and only with invited participants, but we have moved it to a slightly larger venue so may be able to squeeze in further participants — please get in touch if you are interested in taking part.
Here follows the blurb and participant list:
Natural Language as Heritage Code, Sheffield 20th-22nd April 2026
At first glance, programming languages and natural languages seem fundamentally different. Programming languages are primarily used by humans to instruct computers, while natural languages facilitate human-human interactions. Natural languages evolve through history, geography, and culture, exhibiting rich diversity. In contrast, programming languages exhibit limited variation and are primarily text-based, unlike natural languages which are expressed through speech, writing, signs, and gestures.
This workshop will explore whether a unified perspective on natural and programming languages is possible. We aim to explore how such a perspective can challenge existing research in creative/live coding and linguistics. We hope this will help establish a new interdisciplinary field where languages—both natural and programming—are conceptualized as heritage codes.
We will bring together researchers and practitioners in linguistics, live coding (live use of programming languages in the creative arts), and artistic research, approaching coding languages as tools for human-human interaction, potentially in the context of indigenous/non-western language contexts, and for the purposes of human expression through music and dance.
Day 0 – 20th April 2026
Evening: concert
Day 1 – 21st April 2026
A day focussed on introducing ourselves, and finding common ground between our fields of linguistics, programming language research, artistic research, live coding practice etc.
- Orientation and introductions
- Working together to locate interdisciplinary contact points and marking out minefields(!)
We can share and explain the meaning of key words and ideas from our own disciplinary perspectives. - Brainstorming – what are the correspondences and differences between natural and programming languages?
Day 2 – 22nd April 2026
Connecting the fringes: How can we open up and connect linguistic and programming language research from diverse perspectives e.g., via indigenous/non-European languages and linguistic theories of dance/music? We’ll explore topics through four sessions, each prefigured by two ten-minute talks:
- Linguistics and liveness in poetry/writing
- Indigenous languages
- Choreographic/dance language
- Drumming languages
Participants
- Wataru Uegaki – https://edwebprofiles.ed.ac.uk/profile/wataru-uegaki
- Kate Sicchio – https://www.sicchio.com/
- Elin McCready – https://sites.google.com/site/esmccready/elin-mccready
- Alan Blackwell – https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/
- Pritty Patel-Grosz – – https://sites.google.com/view/prittyp/home
- Emma Cocker – https://www.ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/phd-staff/emma-cocker
- Ray Morrison – https://raymorrison.co.uk/
- Yoad Winter – https://www.phil.uu.nl/~yoad/
- Alex McLean – https://thentrythis.org/about/alex-mclean/
- Janani Suresh Ram – https://jananisureshram.com/
- Lizzie Wilson – https://lwlsn.github.io/
- Brandon Hinds – https://www.instagram.com/hpunq/
