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Casey Reas Workshop

September 11, 2014

Casey Reas Workshop

Fourteen MFA graduate students from the Design Department joined a similar number of undergraduate and graduate students from the Knowlton Architecture School in a two-day workshop facilitated by well-known digital media artist Casey Reas on September 4-5, 2014.

Reas, now a professor of Digital Media Arts at the University of California-Los Angeles, began developing experimental software while a student at MIT in the late 1990s. His interest in building software tools that supports the needs of designers and artists who explore visual problems using computers resulted in the development of Processing; an open-source software that integrates programming language with the potential for creative discovery using accessible coding techniques.

Following an introductory session and a jointly-sponsored public lecture by Reas, the students used the Processing software to create code and generate hundreds of visual compositions that were studied, edited, manipulated, and evaluated.  The best examples were printed and projected in a culminating presentation event that was held in the Knowlton School of Architecture on the OSU campus late Friday afternoon.

Reas, a native of Ohio, expressed his gratitude for having the opportunity to bring a new creative challenge to OSU design and architecture students together and the students—many of whom were using Processing for the first time—gained a valuable lesson in just how much interesting work can be produced in a very compressed amount of time.

Enjoy some photos from the event below.

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