Casey Reas

Casey Reas

Credit: Mark Blower.

Casey Reas, “Process Compendium 2004-2010”

Courtesy of Casey Reas.

Casey Reas, “Ultraconcentrated,” 2013. Materials: Custom software, two computers.

Courtesy of Casey Reas.

Casey Reas, “KNBC (December 2015).” Materials: Code, digital video, computer, screen.

Courtesy of Casey Reas.

Casey Reas is a computational artist and co-developer of Processing, a programming language geared towards the visual arts.

Reas’ software, prints and installations have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries in the United States, Europe and Asia. Recent venues include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent commissions have been awarded by the New World Symphony in Miami and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Reas’ work is in a range of private and public collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Reas is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a masters degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Media Arts and Sciences as well as a bachelor’s degree from the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. With Ben Fry, Reas initiated Processing in 2001. Processing is an open source programming language and environment for the visual arts.

He recently co-wrote and designed the book 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 (MIT Press, 2013). Reas and Fry published Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists, a comprehensive introduction to programming within the context of visual media (MIT Press, 2007/2014). With Chandler McWilliams and Lust, Reas published Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010), a non-technical introduction to the history, theory and practice of software in the visual arts. Reas’ Process Compendium 2004—2010 documents six years of his work exploring the phenomena of emergence through software.

Press
The Village Voice, Reas’ Disconcerting Software Paintings
Los Angeles Review of Books, Nostalgia for the Lost Subject of Technology in the Work of Casey Reas
Electric Objects Zine, Interview with Casey Reas
The Creator’s Project, ‘There’s No Distance’ Charts 15 Years of Evolving New Media Art

Watch Casey Reas and Ben Fry present at the 2017 CAST Symposium “Being Material”:

Watch the PROGRAMMABLE Panel Discussion:

Full “Being Material” Symposium video playlist on YouTube