xcoax-feedback-26

Reviewer #1

Questions

• 1. Score
  • Accept
• 2. Originality
  • High
• 3. Relevance for xCoAx
  • High
• 4. Soundness
  • High
• 5. Review
  • This PhD project introduces PhD-Live, an artistic research platform that presents doctoral work as a live, process-driven, and performative practice. Its main contribution is adapting live coding techniques to academic research, making the often unseen, iterative, and uncertain aspects of knowledge creation visible in real-time. The platform combines Obsidian for note-taking with a static site generator to create a “live layer” that documents research activity as it unfolds, without disrupting existing workflows. It also includes an AI component that does not generate content but serves as an interpretive tool, highlighting patterns and connections within the researcher’s evolving knowledge base. This shifts computational infrastructure from neutral support to an active, intermediary material, contributing to debates about authorship, transparency, and human-AI collaboration in the era of generative AI. The project is highly original. While digital gardens and process documentation tools exist, using live coding as both metaphor and method for doctoral research is a novel approach. The distinction between the platform as a recorder of process and as a co-creator—through emergent AI behaviour—adds a complex conceptual dimension. Currently, the project remains mostly theoretical and design-focused, with empirical evidence on how liveness influences research outcomes still needed. PhD-Live aligns with xCoAx’s themes by combining creative freedom, algorithmic structure, and interdisciplinary methods like live coding, software engineering, and critical theory. It encourages collaboration among artists, technologists, and scholars. Ethical issues such as data privacy, consent, and open research politics also align with xCoAx’s focus on the cultural aspects of computation. Regarding its foundation, the project demonstrates solid theoretical support through references to live coding, distributed cognition, and process-based knowledge practices. The technical setup is clearly explained, and ethical considerations acknowledge potential vulnerabilities of public scholarship without rushing to solutions. Some limitations remain: the impact of audience presence on research behaviour is recognised but has yet to be empirically examined, and the interpretive value of the AI layer requires further refinement and testing.

Reviewer #2

Questions

• 1. Score
  • Reject
• 2. Originality
  • Low
• 3. Relevance for xCoAx
  • Medium
• 4. Soundness
  • Low
• 5. Review
  This is a proposal to publicly live-stream doctoral research process by syncing Obsidian notes to website with real-time activity tracking and a proposed AI layer for surfacing connections. The project would use live coding as metaphor for exposing thinking-in-progress. The platform itself if positioned as an artistic work documenting and performing research simultaneously.
  There is possibly a good research question here but it may take more time and thought to develop. As described here, the project seems a bit analogous to open notebook science, an open research log, or academic blogging. There’s a little dissonance between the methodology of live coding which gives immediate sonic/visual feedback within a time-constrained performance and publishing Obsidian notes to a website across 3-5 years. One is live and immediate while the other is more of an ongoing record making. The author acknowledges the tension, but doesn’t really resolve it. There could be more clarity as to the focus of this idea, for example, the proposal could offer a plan for measuring how publication might affect research etc. Surfacing connections, patterns, and thematic concentrations is a start, but what specific intervention would makes this a research contribution rather than a conventional application of existing tools? There’s also some ethical incoherence built in to the concept. How to take an ethical stance on AI extraction while proposing that School of X itself will naturally become a part of the platform with “sessions, conversations, and moments of critique being key material.” Live streaming other people’s PhD development as part of this project’s research agenda would require explicit consent and anonymization options. Is this an appropriate use of the collaborative eLearning space of School of X? %%
  I would not have done that, but clearly this was not communicated well. It does also generally bring up an ethical question of publishing my raw sketchy research as it happens, ie. thing that might be private, like peoples names get shared - anonymisation unless explicitly given needs to be made clear
  %% What are the author’s ideas of publicly sharing a process without replicating the extraction the author is trying to critique? etc etc. I would encourage this author to think through some of these questions and send a revision to next year’s School of X.

my thoughts:

I think that the reviewer 2 feedback was harsh (particularly because I was applying for the doctoral symposium, not even as a proper paper) and it is demoralising because I was so excited by this first expression of this work. But it is fair that it was read in this way, I had to scrabble together the paper quickly, so there was (and is) certainly more work that I could have done refining and making more clear some of these tensions.

The question of, ‘is this actually performance?’, I believe that I can argue the case for this, both from a live coding and a more general performance art perspective, but I do think that I can dial up the performance aspect and lean into it more, at the moment it is still a very first iteration, and it can be pushed more. In fact, following the rejection I added versioning to the pages so you can see more traces of liveness, but there is so much more potential to explore in this regard.

The ethical aspect was a misunderstanding and lack of clarity from me, but it does raise a consideration about capturing people in my research, which of course I will, I am part of a network - I need to think about this a little more