Casey Reas  

Artist Casey Reas uses software code to express his thoughts—starting with a sketch, composing it in code, and witnessing the imagery that it ultimately creates. Using the software he helped to create, Reas uses color to convey emotion and movement.

F or Casey Reas, software is the most natural medium to work with. He uses code to express his thoughts—starting with a sketch, composing it in code, and witnessing the imagery that it ultimately creates.

In the video above, Reas is at work his studio where he uses color to convey emotion with his programming language Processing. —

Together with Ben Fry, he created the software while at MIT, and it is now used by thousands of artists and designers worldwide.

A former student of John Maeda, Reas is an artist whose conceptual and minimal works explore ideas through the contemporary lens of software. Reas’s software and images derive from short text instructions explaining processes that define networks.

Reas attributes his involvement in the creation of the programming language Processing to Maeda’s book, Design by Numbers however while Maeda tends to be considered a “digital” designer, he has consistently explored the boundaries—and possibilities—of varying expressive modes, from pencils to computers, and his reputation, until recently, was built on his penchant for innovative thinking and an insistence on making computation accessible to all.