Casey Reas continues Centuries — software as long-form pictorial practice

2024

Artists: Casey Reas · Year: 2024 · Medium: Software-as-artwork; long-running generative practice · Substrate: Centuries series and successor works; Processing-substrate practice continued into the consolidation era · Place: Los Angeles, USA · Institution: Independent practice / Feral File / various galleries Casey Reas — co-creator of Processing (with Ben Fry, 2001) and one of the most consistently-substantive figures in software-art-as-practice across the 2000s-2020s — continued his Centuries series and related long-form generative work through 2024-26. Where the early 2010s Reas work (Process series, the Centuries paintings) had been substantively about systems-and-rules in the abstract-painting tradition, the late-2010s and 2020s practice has substantively engaged with social-image substrates: televisual-feedback, surveillance-camera footage, and generative-image substrates from the AI-image moment. Reas's exhibitions and editions through 2024-26 have included substantive Feral File programming (the platform Casey has been substantively involved with curatorially and as an artist), substantial gallery presence with bitforms (New York) and Galería OMR (Mexico City), and continued institutional acquisitions. The Centuries title — the framing of software-art as a multi-century pictorial practice rather than as a tech-novelty — has become substantively cited as a positioning argument for what software-art is. For the archive, Reas's continued practice matters because he is one of the substantively-living figures whose long-arc presence connects the late-1990s software-art emergence (his MIT Media Lab and Aesthetics+Computation Group years), the 2000s Processing-and-open-source moment, the 2010s post-software-art consolidation, and the 2020s generative-AI engagement. Few practitioners have substantively persisted across all four phases at substantively-sustained quality. Reas continues to teach at UCLA Design Media Arts; the program he has substantively shaped through the 2010s-20s has produced substantial numbers of working software-artists and has been one of the substantively-important pedagogical sites in the field. Lore Reas's Processing co-founder Ben Fry has continued his own substantive practice (Fathom Information Design, the Boston-based studio) through 2024-26. The Reas-Fry collaboration has substantively continued, with the Processing Foundation (the nonprofit they co-founded) operating Processing 4.x and the broader p5.js ecosystem through volunteer-and-grant funding. Reas's relationship with Feral File began through the platform's earliest Casey Cohen Feral File curatorial period and has been substantively sustained. The Centuries framing was substantively-stated in Reas's own writing in {Software} Structures (2004) and has been substantively elaborated across his exhibition writing since. Sources • Reas, Casey & Fry, Ben — Processing: A Programming Handbook (MIT Press, 2007). • Reas, Casey — {Software} Structures (Whitney Artport, 2004). • Feral File — feralfile.com programming (2024-26).