Plateholder is the second performance of Marije Baalman that explores the use of gesture, or in this case rather posture, as a method of writing code.

In Plateholder the performer holds a plate in different postures in order to write code to sequence sounds. Each new variable needs to be defined as a new posture. The challenge in the performance is for the machine learning algorithm (a linear support vector algorithm) to learn an increasing amount of postures and for the performer to come up with new postures that will not confuse the machine and that the performer can remember over the course of the performance.

The title is a word play on placeholder, as the plate, dependent on how it is held, temporarily represents either a keyword or a variable in the postural coding language (PoCoLa), and the performer holds that plate, though may be replaced in the future by a machine as well?

Photos from Live Coding Sessions #9 on January 15th, 2026, by Dave Pelham