Meet Messica Arson (Jessica Garson)
Jessica Garson (she/her) is a creative technologist, artist, and musician based in New York City. Her work explores sound, code, and performance as forms of storytelling, using technical systems as expressive and emotional instruments.
Since 2017, Garson has been an active part of NYC’s creative coding and live coding scenes. Working under the name Messica Arson, she creates live-coded noise music and visuals using modular synthesizers, often incorporating samples of her own voice. Her performances are known for their intensity and for treating live coding as a performative, narrative act, and she has performed internationally across North America, Europe, and Asia.
Currently developing new work through the project Comforters, she recently collaborated with the collective Visceral Realists, including performances at the International Conference on Live Coding in Shanghai, China.
Alongside her artistic practice, Garson is a Developer Relations leader with nearly 15 years of experience in tech. She has held senior roles at Elastic and Twitter, and is widely known for using storytelling, demos, and performance to make complex systems understandable and memorable. She is active in the Python, JavaScript, DevOps, and creative coding communities and has spoken at conferences worldwide, including PyCon, Write the Docs, PyOhio, and the Developer Relations Summit.
Outside of the livecoding scene, she plans her own shows and run communities like raid.nyc, which hosts talks alongside guest live music. Her band Comforters will be the first to release their upcoming album under the new NYC-based label Fringe Records.
Soundtracks used in this Episode
(in order)
FMPV 2019 (Side B, cassette)
FMPV 2019 (Side A, cassette)
mini meanie MASTER V1.wav
cosmic ladybugs MASTER V1.wav
FMPV 2019 (Side B, cassette)
How can we find you?
Messica is an active member of several Discord communities. You can find her in these servers:
Messica’s Band: comforters.band
Messica’s Bandcamp: messicaarson.bandcamp.com
Messica’s communities: raid.nyc and computer music meetups
If you are in town, be sure to check her out in these tours:
Major Tour Dates
New York City on 6/13
Messica will be doing live visuals using Fort Reno (a JavaScript workflow she created) at the NYC resistor’s interactive show on June 13th
Comforters Euro tour
6/26 — Karlsrue Germany
Livecode show: AKK
6/30 — Berlin
Talk at Show Your Screens
7/1 — Berlin
Impression Taiwan | P60
7/3 — Leytonstone, London
7/4 — Copenhagen
Extreme music venue: Mayhem
NYC on 7/23
Check out the Brooklyn Experimental Electronic Music (BEEM) July Artist Showcase
Messica will be doing a solo show in Wonderville
Future Dates (TBD)
Upcoming show in Boston, and maybe some more around that time (w/ visual artist Indira Void)
References
7:11 Supercollider: a new real time syntheses language 1
9:00 Sonic-pi: your free code-based music creation and performance tool
11:45 Alphaville — live music and bar venue (https://www.alphavillebk.com/)
14:00 TOPLAP BLOG: Live Coding Control of a Modular Synthesizer with ChucK2
26:36 “That’s the version [of the original Tunisian revolutionary poem The Will to Life3] by latifa that plays at a lot of protests, the version I know the best.” — Ramsey Nasser, https://nas.sr/
Video source: Youtube.com/@halaelsheik5492
36:27 8-bit battle song by Waveflower Gooi produced in collaboration with Tzwaan “Swan”4
46:00 From midnight on Saturday, December 12, 2015 to midnight on the following day, SMHOAKSTOCK 5 took place at Shea Stadium featuring Smhoak Mosheein performing for twenty-four hours with 100 friends5
1:08:46 Show Your Screens is originally inspired by the Algorave draft manifesto[6.1], live coding from scratch[6.2], and 100 Performances for the Hole[6.3]. It provides space for newcomers to showcase their audio/visual performance/demo for 10 minutes in an open-mic style setting.6
McCartney, James. “SuperCollider, a New Real Time Synthesis Language.” International Conference on Mathematics and Computing (1996).
McKemie, Daniel. “Live Coding Control of a Modular Synthesizer with ChucK” (August 2019) https://blog.toplap.org/2019/08/02/live-coding-control-of-a-modular-synthesizer-with-chuck/
The Will to Life (Translated) by Abu Al-Qasim Al-Shabbi, Tunisian poet (1909-1934)
جدلية, Jadaliyya-. “Al-Shabbi’s ‘The Will to Life.’” Jadaliyya – جدلية, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/23935. Accessed 23 Dec. 2021.
I composed this song within an hour on Strudel and shared it on Discord livecoding communities. Longtime community member Tzwaan “Swan” took it and fragged my song into a full video game battle song that also loops quite nicely. 8-bit version of this soundtrack available on https://www.subvert.fm/waveflower/8-bit-battle-song
Wlodarczyk, Walter. “SMHOAKSTOCK 5 at Shea Stadium” (December 12, 2015) https://imposemagazine.com/bytes/playlists/smhoakstock-5-at-shea-stadium
