When Switch Angel (Jade Rose) steps onto the main stage to open WebExpo this May, she will be doing more than delivering a keynote; she will be performing a high-wire act of creativity.
Over the past year, Switch Angel’s live-coded music sets have captured millions of views online. Each video shows her generating energetic electronic music by typing text in real time. Behind those viral moments is a 20-year journey that began not in front of a laptop but in a woodshop filled with strings and circuits.
Wood, circuits and strings
Long before she was a “sentient coder,” Jade attended luthier school. She was trained to build string instruments by hand, learning to understand the physical acoustics of wood and air. This dedication to craft didn’t vanish when she transitioned to software; it evolved.
Today, instead of carving spruce or maple, she carves algorithms.
Jade is a maintainer of Strudel, a platform that ports the live-coding language Tidal Cycles to the web. Yet, she approaches code with the soul of a musician. She describes her process as weaving “musical fractals,” inspired by the cyclic patterns found in North Indian classical music and textiles.
Harmonic architecture: Patterns for restarting the world
At WebExpo, Switch Angel will present “Patterns for restarting the world“. In a time when AI can generate a track with a single prompt, she invites us to explore a different path. Her talk explores the freedom of “human-machine interfaces,” where the artist creates their own tools to foster a more intimate, natural experience.
“It is a playground of creativity,” she says about her work. “Being able to shape your own environment allows you to develop your taste in your own process”.
A technical performance with the soul of a magic show
Switch Angel describes her upcoming appearance as “a magic show built on expectation and payoff”. It offers a glimpse into the world of the Algorave, a meeting point of hacker philosophy and club culture where the audience watches the code being written live on screen.
It is transparent, risky and deeply human. She is not hiding behind a pre-recorded track. Instead, she orchestrates her own tools and sets “repetitive conditionals” in motion that grow into evolving patterns of sound.
Whether you code, design, research, market or simply love technology, Switch Angel opens a window into a future where creativity and code move in harmony. She reminds us that even in a digital landscape, the most powerful tool is still the human impulse to create.
Follow Switch Angel on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, SoundCloud or see her Linktree for more.
