Casey Reas

Casey Reas is an American artist who was born in 1972. He studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning and later earned a master’s degree in Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab. After graduating he developed software and electronics for creative projects, and in 2001 co-created Processing with Ben Fry, an open-source language that treats code as a sketching medium for artists and designers. He moved to Los Angeles in 2003 and joined UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts, where he is now a professor and co-director of Social Software. Alongside his studio work he co-founded the Processing Foundation to expand access to creative coding, helped launch Feral File in 2020 to support curated digital art releases, and worked on the Autonomy app for viewing and casting digital collections.

Reas writes systems with simple instructions that unfold over time, so the work feels closer to a performance than a still image. He keeps definition and execution separate: the definition sets the system, and the execution is the work in motion. He is practical about longevity and migrates the work to whatever hardware or display best carries the idea. In each system he looks for a balance between intention and autonomy. He sets the conditions and then lets the software surprise him. The result is an art of change: images cohere, dissolve, and recombine as the structure reveals itself over time. He has iterated this approach through distinct bodies of work. Early pieces modeled simple agents to explore behavior and perception, and the first MicroImage works used custom Tissue and related programs influenced by Valentino Braitenberg’s ideas. With {Software} Structures he formalized instruction-led compositions and invited multiple implementations, later updating the project for modern browsers. Ultraconcentrated and the related Signal to Noise works turned broadcast media into dense, near-abstract fields where patterns reemerge over time. Compressed Cinema uses generative adversarial networks to synthesize moving images from learned “film stills,” with sound by Jan St. Werner. The collection 923 Empty Rooms follows a long-form generative release, expressing one system across a fixed set of 923 instances derived from six city colorforms and developed with Art Blocks and Bright Moments. Across these projects the method is consistent: define a clear system, tune the parameters, and let the work perform across prints, video, software installations, and networked editions.

Reas has presented his work internationally at institutions and festivals including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, ZKM in Karlsruhe, Ars Electronica in Linz, Transmediale in Berlin, ICC in Tokyo, Sónar in Barcelona, and at galleries such as bitforms and DAM. His work is held by the Centre Pompidou, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, and the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Foundation. Honors include the Tokyo Type Directors Club Interactive Design Prize in 2005 for Processing, the UCLA Academic Senate’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2018, and recognition from The Lumen Prize’s Moving Image Award in 2020 for Compressed Cinema. He was also named to ArtReview’s Power 100 in 2022.