Art
Art
Code used as an artistic material: live coding, glitch, ASCII, pixels, teletext. Collected over years, not assembled this afternoon.
Every row has a note, and the ones marked ▶ open and do their thing in the browser right now — no install, no account.
Nothing matches that.
Live coding
47 linksWriting code as a performance, with the sound coming out while you type. Most of these open and play — no install, no account.
- Hydra▶ runshydra.ojack.xyzLive visuals in the browser: video synthesis chains you rewrite while they run. It's painting the moment you open it.
- Strudel▶ runsstrudel.ccTidalCycles ported to JavaScript. Tidal's algorithmic patterns without installing Haskell or SuperCollider.
- cascade▶ runsraphaelbastide.comLive coding with CSS. The shortest bridge between your day job and everything else in this section.
- TOPLAPtoplap.orgThe organisation that named this and wrote the manifesto. “Obscurantism is dangerous. Show us your screens.”
- Sonic Pisonic-pi.netSam Aaron's instrument: you write Ruby and it plays. The friendliest door into all of this.
- Aldagithub.comMusic programming language aimed at musicians, not engineers. You write something close to a score.
- Awesome audio visualizationgithub.comCurated list on audio visualisation — the bridge between what plays and what you see.
- Awesome Live Coding Musicawesomeopensource.comA list focused purely on the music side: frameworks, libraries, and software.
- awesome-livecodinggithub.comThe canonical list, maintained by TOPLAP. When this page falls short, continue here.
- awesome-supercollidergithub.comCurated list of SuperCollider resources. Archived by its author, so expect nothing new.
- Dittytoy▶ runsdittytoy.netCode-driven music with a minimal JS API and a gallery to hear what others made.
- End of Life — Sonic Pi beatyoutube.comA lo-fi beat made entirely in Sonic Pi, with the code published. Hearing it work helps you start.
- Estuary▶ runsestuary.mcmaster.caCollaborative platform for networked performance across several languages at once, from the browser.
- Faust IDE▶ runsfaustide.grame.frIDE for the Faust DSP language. Write the signal processor, compile it to a plugin or to the web.
- Flockingflockingjs.orgDeclarative synthesis: you describe the sound graph as JSON instead of chaining calls.
- flok▶ runsflok.ccCollaborative P2P editor: several people writing sound and visuals into the same document.
- Gibber▶ runsgibber.ccA complete audiovisual environment in the browser: sound, visuals, and notation in one tab.
- Glicolglicol.orgGraph-based music language written in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly. Minimal syntax, low latency.
- Glicol Playground▶ runsglicol.web.appGlicol's REPL. Walk in, write two lines, it plays.
- Gwiongithub.comStrongly-timed music language in the ChucK lineage, smaller and faster.
- IDISproyectoidis.orgArgentine archive of research on image and sound design. Latin American history of art and technology.
- in_threadin-thread.sonic-pi.netThe Sonic Pi community forum. Where you ask when something won't play.
- Limutgithub.comMusic and visuals together in the browser, on WebAudio and WebGL.
- Live Coding Eventslivecode.demozoo.orgCalendar of algoraves and live coding gatherings. For when you want to see it in person.
- Mehackit — Cheatsheetsonic-pi.mehackit.orgThe Sonic Pi cheatsheet on one page. Keep it open your first week.
- Mehackit — Sonic Pisonic-pi.mehackit.orgCreative coding course built on Sonic Pi, exercise by exercise and well structured.
- MolinoLabmolinolab.orgSpace for artistic and cultural experimentation, with live coding activity in Spanish.
- Motifnmotifn.comWrite music in JavaScript and send it over MIDI to your DAW or a real instrument.
- Music Box Fun▶ runsmusicbox.funCompose for a music box by punching pins on a roll, then share it by URL. Charming and deliberately limited.
- Musical Design in SuperCollidergithub.comThe code accompanying a video series on musical design in SuperCollider.
- Olivia Jackojack.xyzThe artist behind Hydra. Her site is the best explanation of why it exists.
- Orcagithub.comEsoteric sequencer on a grid where every letter is an operator. Closer to a puzzle game than a DAW.
- Overtoneovertone.github.ioClojure talking to SuperCollider. If parentheses don't scare you, it's as expressive as this gets.
- Sandpacksandpack.codesandbox.ioCodeSandbox's toolkit for embedding editors that actually run. The piece you'd need to put live coding on your own site.
- sccode.orgsccode.orgCommunity-shared SuperCollider code repository. You learn by reading other people's pieces.
- Sonic Pi — Tutorialsonic-pi.netThe official tutorial, zero to sequencing. It's the material used to teach this in schools.
- Sonic Pi Demostorm-coder-dojo.github.ioA very short intro built for a coder dojo. Good for showing someone in ten minutes.
- SuperCollidersupercollider.github.ioThe synthesis and algorithmic composition platform half this section rests on. Steep curve, very high ceiling.
- SynteLanggithub.comSynthesis-based live coding language and environment, with its own grammar.
- Taller de Live Coding con Sonic Piyoutube.comIntroductory workshop in Spanish. Sonic Pi was developed by Sam Aaron at Cambridge.
- TidalCyclestidalcycles.orgThe pattern language most of the rest descends from. Powerful, and a real install — Haskell and SuperCollider underneath.
- Tweakabletweakable.orgParametric composition: define rules and ranges, then explore the space of pieces that fall out.
- wafxr▶ runsfenomas.github.ioGame sound effect generator in the browser. A direct descendant of sfxr.
- WASM-musicpetersalomonsen.comMusic generated by hand-written WebAssembly. An extreme exercise, and surprisingly musical.
- wavepot▶ runswavepot.comA DAW where every track is a JavaScript function returning samples. Raw, straight to the ear.
- WebChucK▶ runschuck.stanford.eduChucK, Stanford's strongly-timed language, compiled to WebAssembly and running in a tab.
- XSoundxsound.jpVery complete Japanese Web Audio library — synth, effects, visualisation — with a playground to poke at.