Past Student Work

Artist Presentation: Casey Reas

Posted by Sabrina on
“My hovercraft is full of eels”

Casey Reas is an artist who is one of the creators of the Processing programming language, along with Ben Fry. Reas’ works explore texts that define processes which is how his work is created. The works themselves have names such as Process X where X is a number. The Process is then explained in a text that accompanies the image/video. For instance, here is Process 16 for your consideration

Process 16 is defined to be such:

Process 16 (Software 3) is derived from the Process 16 text:
Process 16
A rectangular surface filled with instances of Element 3, each with a different size and gray value. Draw a tiny, transparent circle at the midpoint of each Element. Increase a circle’s size and opacity while its Element is touching another Element and decrease while it is not.
Element 3
Form 2: Line
Behavior 1: Move in a straight line
Behavior 3: Change direction while touching another Element
Behavior 5: Enter from the opposite edge after moving off the surface

There are of course, many more works each with a unique ‘process’ that will lead to a different result. Beautiful ain’t it?

FORD: No, No listen. Just imagine that you’ve got this ebony bath, right? And it’s conical. 
ARTHUR: Conical? What kind of bath is – 
FORD: No, no, shh, shhh, it’s, it’s, it’s conical okay? So what you do, you fill it with fine white sand right? Or sugar, or anything like that. And when it’s full, you pull the plug out and it all just twirls down out of the plug hole… but the thing is… 
ARTHUR: Why? 
FORD: No, the clever thing is that you film it happening. You get a movie camera from somewhere and actually film it. But then you thread the film in the projector backwards. 
ARTHUR: Backwards? 
FORD: Yeah, neat you see. So what happens is you sit and you watch it and then everything appears to swirl upwards, out of the plug hole and fill the bath… amazing. 
ARTHUR: And that’s how the universe began? 
FORD: No. But it’s a marvellous way to relax.