Casey Edwin Barker Reas (born 1972), also known as C. E. B. Reas or Casey Reas, is an American artist whose conceptual, procedural and minimal artworks explore ideas through the contemporary lens of software. Reas is perhaps best known for having created, with Ben Fry, the Processing programming language.

Education and early work

Reas was born Casey Edwin Barker Reas in 1972 in Troy, Ohio. He studied design at the

University of Cincinnati The University of Cincinnati (UC or Cincinnati, informally Cincy) is a public university, public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. It was founded in 1819 and had an enrollment of over 53,000 students in 2024, making it the ...

and then spent the next two years developing software and electronics as an artistic exploration. While studying design in Cincinnati, Reas was a member of a band called 'nancy' with

Scott Devendorf Scott Devendorf is an American multi-instrumentalist. He is best known as the bass guitarist for the American indie rock band the National, with whom he has recorded eight studio albums. Devendorf is also a member of the indie rock project LNZND ...

and

Matt Berninger Matthew Donald Berninger (, born February 13, 1971) is an American singer, primarily known as the frontman and lyricist of indie rock band The National. In 2014, he also formed the EL VY project with Brent Knopf of Ramona Falls and Menomena. ...

, who went on to become members of The National. Reas went on to direct four music videos for the band's 2017 album, ''

Sleep Well Beast ''Sleep Well Beast'' is the seventh studio album by the American indie rock band The National, released on September 8, 2017, by 4AD. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 2018. Promotion On May 9, and May 10, 2017, ...

''. In 2001, Reas earned a Master of Science in Media Arts and Sciences as a part of the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...

Art career

After graduating, Reas began to exhibit his software and installations internationally in galleries and festivals. Reas's software generated images derive from short software-based instructions that visual create processes. The instructions are expressed in different media including natural language, machine code, and computer simulations, resulting in both dynamic and static images. Each translation reveals a different perspective on the process and combines with the others to produce continually evolving visual traces. In 2003, Reas moved to Los Angeles where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Design Media Arts at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

. Since 2012, Reas has incorporated broadcast images into his work, algorithmically distorting them to create abstractions that retain traces of their original, representational function. In 2020, Casey Reas co-founded a platform for showcasing

internet art upright=1.3, "Simple Net Art Diagram", a 1997 work by Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden Internet art (also known as net art or web art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumvents the traditional dominance o ...

and digital art with curated exhibitions all for sale as

non-fungible tokens In economics and law, fungibility is the property of something whose individual units are considered fundamentally interchangeable with each other. For example, the fungibility of money means that a $100 bill (note) is considered entirely equi ...

Processing

In 2001, together with MIT PhD candidate Ben Fry, Reas created the Processing programming language. Processing is widely used by thousands of artists and designers worldwide, and by educators teaching the fundamentals of programing in art and design schools.

Exhibitions

He has shown his work at: * the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

's artport, *

Ars Electronica Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in t ...

in Austria, * ZKM in Germany, *

Transmediale Transmediale, stylised as transmediale, is an annual festival for art and digital culture in Berlin, usually held over three to five days at the end of January and the beginning of February. transmediale takes the form of a conference (sometime ...

in Berlin, * GAFFTA in San Francisco, *Uijeongbu International Digital Art Festival in Korea, *the Danish Film Institute, * bitforms gallery in New York and Seoul, * IAMAS and ICC in Japan, *the Microwave International Media Art Festival in Hong Kong, and *the

Sónar Sónar is a festival dedicated to music, creativity and technology, founded in Barcelona in 1994 by Ricard Robles, Enric Palau, and Sergi Caballero. The festival has been divided into two parts since its inception: Sónar by Day and Sónar b ...

Festival in Barcelona.

Public collections

Reas' work is held in the following collections: * The

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

* The

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...

* The

Carl and Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation The Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation is an American art foundation located in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Dallas, Texas. The foundation exhibits work in its Santa Fe ''Art Vault'', lends work for touring exhibitions from its permanent collection, a ...

* The

Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art The Block Museum of Art is a free public art museum located on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The Block Museum was established in 1980 when Chicago art collectors Mary (daughter of Albert Lasker) and Leigh B. Block ...

* The

Pompidou Centre The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

Paris

Books

* Casey Reas and

Benjamin Fry Benjamin Fry (born 1975) is an American designer who has expertise in data visualization. Early life and education Fry was born in 1975 in Ann Arbor, Michigan."Inside design now: National Design Triennial", by Ellen Lupton, Cooper-Hewitt Museu ...

, ''Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists'', MIT Press, 2007. * Casey Reas, ''Process compendium 2004-2010'', REAS Studio, 2010. * Casey Reas, ''Making Pictures with Generative Adversarial Networks'', Anteism Books, 2019.

References

External links

*
List of works held by the Victoria and Albert Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reas, Casey American artists Living people 1972 births People from Troy, Ohio University of Cincinnati alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture faculty MIT Media Lab people

Education and early work

Art career

Processing

Exhibitions

Public collections

Books

See also

References

Further reading

External links