Philosophy of Tissue — Casey Reas's Feral File release

2020

Artists: Casey Reas · Year: 2020 · Medium: Generative NFT release — continuous video compositions from Reas's long-running Tissue series · Substrate: Processing-based generative code; continuously-running video; NFT distribution via Feral File with extensive curatorial framing · Place: Los Angeles, USA · Institution: Feral File Casey Reas — co-founder of Processing (elsewhere in this archive, 2001), sustained generative artist since the early 2000s — released Philosophy Tissue on Feral File in 2020. The work is a generative NFT release in which a specific fixed-output generative algorithm produces 200 unique compositions from a specified seed-range; each compositional state is a variation on Reas's long-running Process series vocabulary (circles in motion, colliding, leaving trails). Philosophy Tissue is, in a formal sense, a specific moment of Reas's Process practice compressed into the NFT commercial form. Reas's choice of platform is specific. Feral File was launched by the artist Casey Reas himself (with Harm van den Dorpel and Ben Vickers among others) in 2019 as an alternative to the larger commercial NFT platforms, specifically oriented toward artist-curated exhibitions and smaller-scale, more institutionally-careful releases. The Philosophy Tissue release in 2020 was both a Reas artwork and an institutional statement about what NFT releases could look like when they were organized by artists for artists rather than for commercial-platform maximization. What makes the piece belong in this archive is that it is one of the clearest cases of a first-generation-software-artist's continuation into the NFT era with full aesthetic and intellectual continuity. Reas had been making specifically-Process-series generative works since 2004. The 2020 Philosophy Tissue release is a new Reas Process work, distributed through the 2020-era NFT infrastructure, without any loss of continuity from the earlier work. The artist did not pivot; he added a new distribution channel that happened to be the dominant one of the period. Reas has continued both his Process series and his Feral File curatorial work through the 2023-25 period. He teaches at UCLA Design Media Arts and lives in Los Angeles. Lore Feral File's founding was motivated in part by Reas and his collaborators' dissatisfaction with the specifically commercial orientation of the larger NFT platforms of 2018-19. The founders wanted a platform that could host curatorially-ambitious group exhibitions, that could pay artists at rates reflecting artistic-contribution rather than secondary-market speculation, and that could operate with the institutional patience that museum curatorship requires. Feral File has run continuously since 2019 and has hosted approximately fifty curated exhibitions by 2024. Reas's Philosophy Tissue release was one of the platform's early major solo shows. Sources • Feral File — feralfile.com (platform archive). • Reas, Casey — reas.com (artist archive). • Reas, Casey — "Notes on Generative Art" (reas.com writing archive, various dates).