Notes in Casey Reas’s sketchbook in 2001 from the first conversation about the project that would become Processing.
Utilized in projects like Carnivore—a visualization tool launched in 2001 that used surveillance software employed by the US government in the wake of 9/11 as the basis for art-making—the programming language processing gained prominence in many projects supported and featured on Rhizome.
In a 2009 interview, Casey Reas, Co-Founder of Processing, reflected on the origins of the programming language:
It was sometime in June 2001, as I was finishing up at MIT. We made a list of the basic specs for the environment and drawing functions. It was one 8 ½ x 11 inch typed page. By the fall, Ben [Fry] had something working and the first workshop took place in Japan in August, 2001...
The big idea of Processing is the tight integration of a programming environment, a programming language, a community-minded and open-source mentality, and a focus on learning -- created by artists and designers, for their own community. The focus is on writing software within the context of the visual arts. Many other programming environments embodied some of these aspects, but not all.
John Maeda's Design By Numbers is the direct parent of Processing. Our goal was to emulate its simplicity and focus on making images, animation, and interaction. But, we wanted to exceed the limits of DBN: 100 x 100 pixels, grayscale, and integer math.
John Maeda, Screen recording of a coding demonstration using Design by Numbers,
late 1990s.
Casey Reas, Processing Sketches, 2016.