Lauren Lee McCarthy Creates p5.js

Lauren Lee McCarthy created p5.js roughly twelve years after the initial release of Processing in 2001. P5.js is a JavaScript library that revitalizes the goals of the original Processing project for today’s web environment, where JavaScript—quite different from Java, despite their similar names—has become the dominant Internet-based language.

Originating from Processing, designed by Ben Fry and Casey Reas between 2000 and 2001 as a Java-based visual language for artists, the evolution to p5.js represents a shift towards more accessible web-native programming. Like Processing, p5.js has the aim of empowering artists to learn coding.

Unlike Processing.js, which John Resig released in May 2008 and which translated Java-based sketches to JavaScript, p5.js operates directly in JavaScript, aligning with modern web standards and utilizing browser capabilities without requiring plugins. This development has the benefit for seamless integration of web elements and media, leveraging browser-based tools and enhancing educational and creative opportunities in digital art and design. In this sense of utilizing the web as a canvas, p5.js can be seen as continuing the traditions of net.art and further solidifies the link between net art, software art and blockchain-based art.