The recent London performance of Luigi Nono's composition for orchestra and live-processing, Prometeo, was presented as an apotheosis of the Italian composer's work. John Wollaston essays a paraphrase of this complex 'super-capsule' of the untransmittable

In the 1960s and '70s musicians devised innovative forms of notation and protocol to liberate themselves from aesthetic and social conventions. Today's digital devotees of code based production and improvisation are continuing this tradition, argues Simon Yuill*

Twenty Five Years from Scratch, ed. Michael Parsons, London: London Musician's Collective, 1994.

If relational aesthetics and open source were always commercial, can the musical score provide a way of thinking through different relationships between creativity and code? The return to improvisation in 'livecoding' draws parallels with experimental practices developed by maverick musicians, programmers and educators from Sun Ra, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Scratch Orchestra to Seymour Papert. Simon Yuill argues that these 'di