November 3, 2025

Jeopardy

Hello

A rare email from me to you. A lot of people joined this mailing list recently - welcome to you and welcome to this latest edition of the sparsely episodic heavy lifting newsletter.

Actually I have made several attempts to write a newsletter this year but they never made it out of the drafts. I have contributed to some blog posts (more on that later) but mostly I’ve just been sending emails (more on that later too).

(Actually I started writing this newsletter in September and only just finished it hehe. I’m reading Silence by Shushako Endo at the moment and the first half of the book is written through a peripatetic set of letters of a missionary to his superior, and it made me realise you don’t have to write everything in one go and so I’ve come back to finish this many weeks later).

Alpaca

Me, Alex, Ray and Hazel ****just****¹ put on the first ever Alpaca festival here in Sheffield. I guess I really wasn’t that sure what to expect from a festival about algorithmic patterns, even though I organised it. I also wonder if anyone was really sure about it; it felt to me like we were deciding as we went along.

I remember after the first AlgoMech festival Alex said something like “I just sent a few emails and a festival happened” - at the time I thought this was very funny. But actually in a way it kindof was like that to organise the festival. I mean there was also a monster spreadsheet and a signal chat, but they were sort of only there to keep track of the emails.

It feels pointless to try to describe the festival (I think most of you were probably there anyway). I was super excited about it in the run up but even so it totally exceeded my expectations. Of course all the performances etc were great, but we knew they would be which is why we booked all those people. But I think what surprised me was:

• How relatively non-stressful the production was
• How much it felt like a festival rather than a series of discrete events
• How happy I felt the whole time (except for when I had to go and sleep in my car because I'd seen too many faces lol)
• How much of a nice time everyone seemed to be having
• How many chickens we printed in Panke

Somehow like AlgoMech it became the Lucy show, and I did a lot of different things (I’m sure I don’t do this on purpose, but looking through the photographs there seem to be an awful lot of me hogging the PA/mic).

On the Friday I did a rare (these days) heavy lifting solo set. Just before the pandemic I really felt I was on the top of my game with heavy lifting, playing loads of shows, having fun in my performances, having a nice balance of preparedness and jeopardy². Then there was the weird pandemic live stream period, and then the even weirder post pandemic uncomfortable gigs period. In this time I felt very much not on top of my game and wasn’t really enjoying solo performances. So for a while I just did a lot of collabs and that was a lot of fun and I think I learnt a lot.

Earlier this year I showed up last minute and played an open slot at one of the Corsica Algoraves in London, with just a laptop and a minijack. I had one of my favourite gigs ever just messing about trying to crash my computer. I remembered something I knew when I first started live coding but seemed to have forgotten, and that is that I love laughing at my own jokes!!!!! I had a nice plan for the Alpaca set and then my tech failed and I ended up just laughing at my own jokes again and realised that laughing at myself I felt complete freedom from judgement (sorry I can't help myself linking that website). I could see loads of my friends in the (weirdly seated) crowd cheering me on and I honestly felt like I could do anything. thanks so much <3

(lol just kidding)

New skool

Earlier this year I started jamming with pastagang, a super open live coding jam group. You can read more about pastagang on their very nice blog and go jam with them in nudel. Anyway pastagang has basically restored my faith in weirdo goofy live coding.

During Alpaca I hosted Mags and Hannes at my house, both of whom I met through pastagang. It was so cool to get to know them both more and to hang out. Also they both did SO MUCH to help with the festival, it genuinely would have been a much worse experience without them there.

We were the face of pastagang for the Alpaca talk about the pastagang paper, and we also recorded a podcast of us talking about the pastagang talk and paper (meta). Pastagang also performed at delicious clam which was extremely fun!

It’s cute to see people in the crowd joining from their phones :)

Old skool

A lil shout out to some old friends who also came into my IRL world from the URL realm during Alpaca - Seán & Kate who I met via Scuttlebutt in the pandemic showed up in Sheffield to join the festival. I was honestly super overwhelmed to meet them in person, and super super touched that they came all the way across the Atlantic. I can't really explain what that meant to me. I spent a lot of time talking with Seán and our friends Scott and Zach during the lockdown and our conversations really shaped how I relate to that weird time in our lives. I figured we would never meet in person but I was wrong and it was very lovely to be wrong.

You and a who skool

So much other stuff has been going on but I can't really explain it all properly...

• I ugly cried at the Peckham Digital summer school cause I couldn't believe there were like 20 young people live coding in south east london (my hometown). (Live coding is changing and it's weird but I think it's probably good and I'm old and need to not let myself become too misty eyed or grumpy)
• I started a PhD and let me tell you I'm walking around a lot and I'm very tired but it's really really nice to finish work and not feel like I've taken psychological damage
• Zaron introduced me to the wonderful world of VR Chat and I played a gig for the lovely people at Number9 and basically being a digital pigeon is great and now I love VR
• We are in the process of moving the Sheffield pattern club/alpacalab to a new studio space on Matilda Street where we will be able to host some small events and I think it's gonna have a bit of an Access Space vibe and I feel really good about that

Soon

• me and Adam are doing a P Foundation set at Loz's NPC night at Hatch on 14th November. We will sit on the floor with an electric tabla dressed as moogles and if you're lucky you might get mail from mognet
• There is a big live code stream for Palestine coming up on 22nd November - me and Alex will be jamming with Emergence Collective and hosting an in-person party at our new space. We are also putting on a gig at Sidney & Matilda on 14th December. There is no info about these gigs online yet but please sign up to the pattern club mailing list for more infos! (dw we won't spam you)
• I'm going to Spain for Christmas catch me in Andalusia drinking alcohol free beers at my mum's house!!!!

Cool see you in a year when I write my next newsletter

Lucy xx