Casey Reas is one of the most important new media artists of his generation. His work on the development of the visual art open-source programming language Processing with Ben Fry means his influence extends not just through his acclaimed work, but also through the language and tools of Processing. It is fair to say that Reas’s hand lies at the backbone of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of artworks from creative coders across the globe. Within the NFT space, Reas stands out as not just an astute commentator and elder statesman of the space but equally an increasingly important player. In 2021, he established Feral File, an online NFT gallery, exhibiting artists’ work that sit at the forefront of the community. In a space with much need for curation, Feral File exemplifies a leading new media voice putting his stamp on the quality, often overlooked, that exists.

For Natively Digital, Reas presents There’s No Distance 2.1. The work is a direct evolution of the Still Life series of work from 2016, which emerged from code sketches made over the prior fifteen years. It’s the world premiere of a new video series created using custom code. In his own words, “this artwork is a medium for thinking about simulation and the history of visual representation. Each frame of the video starts as Platonic solid (a cube) that is numerically defined and rendered to an image; this image is taken apart pixel by pixel to create a second-order image where a red, green, and blue line is drawn according to the color values of each pixel. As the cube is rotated slightly with each new frame, the lines flow to define a new space”. Relating to the history of perspective in painting, There’s No Distance 2.1 is what Reas would describe as a “technical image” that extends the history of analytical cubism into the domain of digital images. The work displays the conceptual clarity and rigour for which Reas is known for, and his universally regarded level of craftsmanship within the digital realm.

Reas’s software, prints, and installations have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries. His work ranges from works on paper to urban-scale installations, and he balances solo work in the studio with collaborations. Reas’ work is in a range of private and public collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Whitney Museum of American Art. 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 and a bachelor's 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 is represented by bitforms gallery