LiveCodeLab is a web-based livecoding environment for 3D visuals and sound that are created on the spot without evaluating of lines of code. The project was built on top of of the Code Mirror editor by Marijin Haverbeke and the live coding framework Fluxus by the Pawful collective. A lot of the infrastructure, logic and routines are inspired from computer web-based computer graphics libraries like three.js and processing.js.

I thought this project was really interesting in the way that it removes the traditional frustrations of programming from the workflow, thus making it an optimal entry point for visual artists with no programming experience. Its facility to pick up and simple same-window on-the-go live tutorials make it a great tool for early prototyping. In LiveCodeLab, code is evaluated as it is typed. So code that doesn’t make sense is simply not implemented, while other lines are evaluated–no delay whatsoever.

The Github isn’t very well documented but I’m assuming that as opposed to Hydra it isn’t based on shaders but rather a live canvas updated frame by frame through the CPU. This makes it noticeably slow when shapes become more complex (I’ve done some testing and the window crashes at 100 cubes rotating on an M1). But you have to take it for what it is: a prototyping and educational tool.