Craving
A web experience on p5.js about the mechanics of addiction: you hold on and hold on — and at some point you fail to let go of the intrusive thought and lose.
- Status
- Running
- Type
- Art experience
- Platforms
- Desktop
- Capabilities
- Sound
- Technology
- p5.js
- Updated
- 19 September 2026
The essence
A web experience on p5.js visualising the struggle with an addiction — the moment when you hold on and hold on, but if at some point you do not let the thought go, you lose.
Context
The work was made within the premasters track of the ITMO Art&Science master’s programme. I made it at a moment when I was myself in the process of cutting down a nicotine dependence and preparing to move on to other ways of working with the habit.
p5.js is an open-source JavaScript library for creative coding, created by Lauren McCarthy as the web successor of Processing. It makes interactive visual experiences quick to build right in the browser.
The idea
I needed to visualise how you hold on, hold on, hold on — but if at one particular moment you do not let go of the intrusive thought, you lose to the bad habit. You get a dose of nicotine, and together with it a dose of emptiness that scolds you for having taken it. In the end there is no positive effect from anything: the satisfaction is fleeting, and the emptiness remains.
Although the work grew out of my personal experience of nicotine dependence, it applies to any addictions and habits — the ones we are trying to give up or, on the contrary, are about to take up. The mechanic is always the same: the illusion of relief that never arrives.
The solution
An interactive web experience on p5.js where the user literally lives through this cycle — holding on, the lapse, the emptiness. The sound is generated with the means of p5.js as well. Claude helped with the implementation.
What I did myself
- Developed the concept and the visual metaphor
- Built the interactive experience on p5.js
- Generated the soundscape with the means of p5.js
- Used Claude as an assistant in the code
Stack
- p5.js
- Claude
Skills
- creative coding
- generative sound
- visualising inner states through interaction
- conceptual work with personal experience
Result
A finished web experience presented within the Art&Science premasters track. For me the value of this work is in its honesty: it does not aestheticise addiction but shows the mechanic behind any habit you are trying to leave. The promise of relief → the lapse → the emptiness. No happy ending, only an awareness of the cycle.