Casey Reas, co-creator (with Ben Fry) of the elegant Processing coding environment so beloved now by artists, talks to our friends at The Creators Project in a recent video. Processing may be best known as only a tool, but it’s also become an open source conduit for ideas in aesthetics and digital art. Casey’s impact on its design is profound: the way the tool works, the way the code editor works, and even code examples are all partly his contributions (along with other collaborating artists). And when some of his personal work is a showcase for the tool, that’s doubly true. It seems to me akin to the development of artistic media at some of the peaks of technique – take, for instance, key moments in the evolution of painting. Tools and techniques, aesthetics, culture, and output are shared by practitioners all at once.
Casey also says something really beautiful about using color values in the way that you’d use sound in film, underlying emotion.
It’s a much-watch video, and Casey, I hope we get to talk a bit soon, as well.