Artists>>Casey Reas
From 1999-2001, Reas was a graduate student and researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. After twenty-eight years of drawing, playing video games, drumming, and designing information systems, his nascent talent for writing software forged these disparate interests into a new path. Building on his professional experience and undergraduate studies in design at the University of Cincinnati, he spent the next two years developing software and electronics as an artistic exploration. After graduating, Reas began to exhibit his software and installations internationally in galleries and festivals.
In August 2001, Reas moved to Italy. As one of the founding professors at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Reas worked with an international student body to develop a new arts pedagogy for the present cultural and technical environment. Simultaneously, Reas initiated Processing with Ben Fry. Processing is a programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound. It is used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. After two years in Italy, Reas moved to Los Angeles. As an assistant professor in the department of Design | Media Arts at UCLA, Reas interacts with undergraduate and graduate students to push the boundaries of art and design. His classes provide a foundation for thinking about computers and the Internet as a medium for exploration and set a structure for advanced inquiry into synthesis of culture, technology, and aesthetics.