"Why, his hands move so fluidly that they almost make music" (Ba.Ch creates a chess program for Crab, Hofstadter, 2000 p729). We can do better than almost. Live computer music and visual performance can now involve interactive control of algorithmic processes. In normal practise, the interface for such activity is determined before the concert. In a new discipline of live coding or on-the-fly programming the control structures of the algorithms themselves are malleable at run-time. Such algorithmic fine detail is most naturally explored through a textual interpreted programming language. A number of practitioners are already involved with these possibilities using a variety of platforms and languages, in a context of both public exhibition and private exploration. An international organisation, TOPLAP, has recently been established to promote the diffusion of these issues and provide a seal of quality for the audiogrammers, viders, progisicians and codeductors exploring the art of live coding. Practitioners provide descriptions of their work in later sections of the paper. For the act of performance, a manifesto, Lubeck 04, presented herein, attempts to qualify the expertise required in live programming for an acceptable contribution to this new field.