PeopleFaculty, Professor

Casey Reas

Casey Reas is an artist and educator who lives in Los Angeles. His software, prints, and installations have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries in the United States, Europe, and Asia. His work varies from small works on paper to building-scale software installations and he balances solo work in the studio with collaborations with architects and musicians. Reas’ work is in a range of private and public collections at institutions including the Centre Georges Pompidou and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Processing is an open-source programming language and environment for the visual arts.

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 bachelors 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.

Reas 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). 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.