A photography studio-residence currently being designed by davidclovers is the subject of a collaborative research between davidclovers and myself. 07 MASSES explores the specific impact of luminosity and texture on mass and massiveness through a series of scaled prototypes. I developed software that was used to generate the pattern embedded in the surface of the structure. The model, developed by davidclovers in summer 2008, is currently on exhibition at Artist Space in New York in the show Matters of Sensation. The show runs from 25 Sep to 22 Nov 2008.

TI will be shown at the The 5th Seoul International Media Art Biennale which takes place at the Seoul Museum of Art. The exhibition is open from 12 September to 5 November 2008. I’m very honored to be showing my work with Julien Maire, Anish Kapoor, Olafur Eliasson, and many other excellent artists. There’s more information on the Media_City Seoul website.

The Tissue Collection, created in collaboration with 1 of 1 Studio, will be exhibited at C.STEM in Turin, Italy from 19 to 27 September, 2008. The exhibition takes place at the Ex-Chiesa Metodista (via Lagrange 13, 10122 Torino.) The event is conceived and curated by Associazione Culturale e di Ricerca NADA. They write:

The festival is focusing on creative potential of Computational Design: a viewpoint and a working hypothesis where computational generative strategies become a vital tool to connect the new potential of digital fabrication to an ever growing demand for mass customized design objects.

Other exhibition participants include Ammar Eloueini, Ebru Kurbak and Mahir Yavuz, Adrian Bowyer, Nervous System, MOS, Marc Fornes, Fluid Forms, and Susanne Stauch. There’s more information at the C.STEM website.

The Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria has curated the “Digital Senses” exhibition that runs from 18 April to 11 May at the Center for Contemporary Art in Kiev. My Tissue software is a part of the exhibition. The curatorial statement by Manuela Pfaffenberger and Gerfried Stocker is posted on the exhibition website.

When Tissue was shown at the Ars Electronica center in 2003 (see image above) the software used a unique interface called the Responsive Window. It was built by Joe Paradiso of the MIT Media Lab. The Responsive Window locates the position of taps and knocks on a glass surface. The Tissue software was projected onto the glass and responded to the input by changing its form and motion.

Process 5 is included in the “Holy Fire, Art in the Digital Age” exhibition in Brussels. The show, curated by Yves Bernard and Domenico Quaranta, runs from 18 to 30 April 2008 at the iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology. It is described as:

… a collective exhibition featuring a unique panel of digital artworks created in the last years by internationally known new media artists, and coming from galleries and collections from around the world (USA, Europe, Russia). Holy Fire is an attempt to explore how new media art, bypassing all the stereotypes connected with its presumed immateriality and difficulties of maintenance, was able to enter the art market.

The organizers make a clear statement about their views of the current status of what is often referred to as media art:

The artworks in Holy Fire are not new media art, but simply art of our time: art which appropriates institutional or corporate identities, creates fictional ones, hacks softwares and game engines for its own purposes, infiltrates online or offline communities in order to portray them or their own myths, subverts existing tools or creates its own ones, explores the aesthetics of computation and information spaces; or, more simply, uses computer hardware and software in order to create art which talks about our world.

With the accelerated technological development (e.g. large flat screens, powerful beamers [projectors], ubiquitous computing, fast network) and the sociological and cultural acceptance of digital tools and media, new media art is becoming one of the main currents of 21th century art, looking at its own nexus to our techno-environment as a strength (not deafness), and is entering into our everyday life in our office, in public or corporate buildings as well as in our home

The exhibition includes work from Cory Arcangel (USA), Gazira Babeli (SL), Boredomresearch (UK), Christophe Bruno (FR), Gregory Chatonsky (FR), Miguel Chevalier (FR), Vuk Cosic (SLO), Shane Hope (USA), Jodi (BE/NL), Lab[au] (BE), Joan Leandre (SP), Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied (RU/DE), Golan Levin (USA), Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG (IT), Alison Mealey (UK), Mark Napier (USA), C.E.B. Reas (USA), Charles Sandison (UK/FI), Antoine Schmitt (FR), Yacine Sebti (BE), Alexei Shulgin & Aristarkh Chernyshev (RU), John F. Simon, Jr. (USA), Paul Slocum (USA), Wolfgang Staehle (USA), Eddo Stern (USA), Ubermorgen.com (AT), and Carlo Zanni (IT).

The TI installation is included in the group show “Impermanent Markings” at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York. The show opens on Thursday, 6 March from 17:00 - 20:00 and runs from 7 March - 17 April 2008.

The exhibition is curated by Linda Lauro-Lazin, artist and professor of Digital Arts at Pratt Institute, and features work by Jean-Pierre Hebert, Ana Mendieta, Oscar Munoz, The OpenEnded Group (Marc Downie, Shelley Eshkar, and Paul Kaiser), C.E.B. Reas, Carolee Schneemann, and Camille Utterback.

The press release says it is an, “exhibition that considers both universal impermanence and the individual artist’s mark and seeks to define drawing in very broad terms through media such as sand, fire, earth, water, code motion capture, performance, video, and installation.”

I’m giving a talk called “Emergence” at the gallery at 18:00 on 7 March. The day before the opening, Camille Utterback, Jean-Pierre Hebert, and myself have a panel discussion for Linda Lauro-Lazin’s class at Pratt’s Brooklyn campus.

I have a solo show of new work at the bitforms gallery, nyc from 6 March to 12 April 2008. The show opens on Thursday, 6 March 2008, 6-8 pm.

The press release reads:

bitforms gallery is pleased to announce a third solo exhibition with artist C.E.B. Reas, opening March 6. Featuring work from his Process series, the show includes software installations, unique prints, and relief sculpture. Shown in the United States for the first time, these pieces are based in new visual systems, Process 14 and Process 18. Also opening March 6 and marking the New York debut of Reas’ TI installation, a concurrent exhibition titled Impermanent Markings runs at Pratt Manhattan Gallery. Friday March 7, at 6:00 PM, there will be free public lecture with the artist in the campus gallery at 144 West 14th Street.

Work by C.E.B. Reas can be understood in terms of traditional image-making techniques, however the focus lies within finely crafted programs that define processes. Each process, or discreet set of qualitative situations, holds the capacity for expression in user-defined media and scales. After defining each artwork first as a rigorous, logical statement, Reas tests the flexibility of that rational system by playing with the viewpoint and display of visual information. The dynamic physical aesthetics of these creations can be described in geometric, concrete, and/or abstract terms.

Reas’ relationship to writing computer code is akin to Sol LeWitt’s authorship of instructions for wall drawings, but generative software procedures in Reas’ art replace the human hand. Specifically from the perspective of programming, artists Vera Molnar and Manfred Mohr have inspired Reas’ approach toward building visual compositions. Also influenced by earlier artists and thinkers working within systemic conceptual frameworks such as Euclid, Lissitzky, and Haacke, Reas focuses on relationships between dynamic elements.

Perpetually elusive moments characterize Reas’ software installations. Process 14 uses the circle as a primary form and Process 18 uses line. Both kinetic systems are displayed in the gallery as projections on rectangular surfaces, and the picture plane of each is spilt in half vertically. At right, a two-dimensional black and white linear structure reveals the behaviors applied to geometric elements. On the left half, the same geometry creates warm three-dimensional textures.

P18 (Object 1) and P18 (Object 2) are topographical reliefs in resin created using a subtractive milling technique. Articulating a spatial representation of Process 18, these works are algorithmically calculated and translate value into a three-dimensional coordinate. Likewise, prints in the exhibition frame a discreet two-dimensional moment from a system.

The images from Process 18 are depicted in grey scale, however the pictures from Process 14 integrate color. Because hue is a complex value to define and holds subjective emotional content, Reas has chosen to hand-select the mixing palette used for these images. Lush pinks and magentas of Reas’ prints based on Process 14 prints feel so highly charged that a visual kinship appears to exist with Modern abstract painting. Reas’ drawing structures allow time-based execution of each instructed iteration to be performed on open systems, instead of physically manipulated traditional plastic forms. Comparatively using software as a vehicle, philosophic territory that has been historically dominated by oil and water-based media can now be described inside an even wider aesthetic context.

Projected from floor to ceiling, Reas Network software depicts the passage of information through organic and technical environments. Suggesting the fundamental properties of any constellation — be they activities in a star formation or that in peer to peer file sharing — nodes and the channels of connection are represented with the minimalist visual language of lines and circles.

The Protean Image Machine was first exhibited at TAG<> in The Hague. It has now moved to the Museum De Paviljoens where it is on view from 5 March - 6 April 2008. The museum explains the exhibition:

From 17 November 2007 through 6 April 2008, Museum De Paviljoens will show At Random? Netwerken en kruisbestuivingen (Networks and cross-pollinations), an exhibition with the character of a workshop that will continue to develop and expand until April 2008. In the exhibition, Museum De Paviljoens - along with the participating artists and designers - investigates creative processes within the present-day network society.

The museum’s exhibition website explains more.

From the <>TAG website:

<>TAG is participating in the Project(or) Art Fair platform for contemporary art spaces with the work of C.E.B. Reas. From 6 February to 10 February 2008. Twenty-eight progressive art spaces will present art, performances and art fair presentations by over one hundred artists.

Participants like Fette’s Gallery from Los Angeles, Artists Anonymous from Berlin, Liquidacion Total from Madrid, The Centre of Attention from London, KOP from Breda, and <>TAG from The Hague will present themselves in their own way, from performance to an extravagant art fair presentation.

1 of 1 Studio presents the Tissue Collection at Concrete Image Store, Amsterdam. 1 of 1 Studio is an independent design studio that synthesizes fashion and art into one-of-a-kind apparel made to order in Los Angeles. Each signed and numbered piece results from a collaboration between a commissioned artist and fashion designer Cait Reas. The Tissue collection was a collaboration between myself and Cait. I provided the images for the textiles and she designed the garments, positioned the images, and oversaw the entire production process. The Tissue software was first written in 2001 and has been materialized in many different ways over the years. First as prints, then later as two installations, and now as textiles.

The exhibition opens 18 September 2007 and runs until 3 November. It’s open from 12:00 to 19:00 every day. The Concrete Images Store is located at Spuistraat 250, Amsterdam.