Photo: Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design from Moscow, Russia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Credit: LEARNING TO SPEAK WITH CODE

Casey Reas

Casey Reas (b. 1972, Troy, Ohio) is half of the reason a collection like this can exist: with Ben Fry he created Processing, the programming language that taught a generation of artists to draw with code. It's how I got here too — I first encountered Reas's work in 2011, in a Processing class taught by Marius Watz, and I've been a fan ever since; years later I got to play a small support role on his most recent plotter drawings shown at DAM. The RGB drawings hold what I love most about his work: a simple system with seemingly infinite depth and possibility, the kind of piece that just keeps being interesting on the wall. Reas studied design at the University of Cincinnati and finished at MIT's Media Lab in the Aesthetics and Computation Group in 2001, and his software, prints, and installations have shown internationally ever since. My favorite side detail: in Cincinnati he played in a band called nancy with Scott Devendorf and Matt Berninger, who went on to form The National — and Reas later directed four videos for their album Sleep Well Beast.

Artist's website (reas.com) ↗Read more on Wikipedia ↗

1 physical work · 5 digital projects (21 iterations)