I created a software installation for the 2010 Whitney Gala. The software was projected onto sixteen two-sided panels suspended from the ceiling on the third floor of the museum and above hundreds of attendees, carefully worded speeches, and a John Legend performance. My sincere thanks to Adam, Christiane, Gina, Rachel, Bronson, Lauren, and Dave. While I’m waiting for the professional photography, the low-resolution photo above was snapped on my phone during the event. I posted a few installation photos in the Process set on the REAS Flickr account.

The fall exhibition of the second-year DMA MFA candidates is called “I am here now” and it opens 14 October 2010 at 5pm in the New Wight Gallery at the Broad Art Center at UCLA. The show runs until 20 October. The exhibition features new work by Mattia Casalegno, Jonathan Daniel Cecil, Diego Gomez, Peter Hawkes, Kevin Haywood, Quiming Li, Lauren McCarthy, Tiffany Lee Trenda, David Barrott Wicks. I’m advising many of these student through the thesis process this year. There’s more information on the exhibition site.

I’m presenting the Process Compendium as a 15 minute performance around 3:00pm on Sunday 17 October as a part of the Map Marathon at the Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London. The event is curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and presented by the Serpentine Gallery.

From the official website:

The Serpentine Gallery presents the fifth event in its acclaimed Marathon series on 16 and 17 October. The multi-dimensional Map Marathon will feature non-stop live presentations by over 50 artists, poets, writers, philosophers, scholars, musicians, architects, designers and scientists. This ambitious two-day event takes place in London during Frieze Art Fair week.

Participations include performances and presentations from: Marina Abramović, David Adjaye, Etel Adnan, John Akomfrah, Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, Julieta Aranda, Kader Attia, Nanni Balestrini and Morgan Bennett Balestrini, Artur Barrio, Peter Barber, Rosi Braidotti, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, John Brockman, Mariana Castillo Deball and Amalia Pica, Adam Chodzko, Céline Condorelli, Michael Craig-Martin, Marcus du Sautoy, Simon Fujiwara, Gilbert & George, Goldin+Senneby, Joost Grootens, Pancho Guedes, Richard Hamilton and Eyal Weizman, Mona Hatoum, Susan Hiller, Russell Hoban with Eleanor Bron, Claire Hooper, Marine Hugonnier, Amar Kanwar, Anish Kapoor, Janice Kerbel, Scott King, Aaron Koblin, Suzanne Lacy, Klara Lidén, Luigi Ontani, Claude Parent and Nathanael Dorent, Katie Paterson, Adriano Pedrosa, Julia Peyton-Jones, C. E. B. Reas, Marwan Rechmaoui, Pedro Reyes, Alex Rich, Tim Robinson and Simon Cutts, Jacques Roubaud, David Rowan, Anri Sala, Dimitar Sasselov, Annemarie Sauzeau, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Timothy Taylor/Krysztina Tautendorfer with Tom Frankland, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Oraib Toukan, Adrián Villar Rojas, Ai Weiwei, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa and Cerith Wyn Evans. With a special presentation from DLD, (dld-conference.com). Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

1-3 October 2010

Processing.Android: Open Source for Mobile Innovation
UIC Innovation Center
1240 W Harrison St, Chicago, Illinois 60607

Visit the Processing.Android event site for more information.
This event if free to attend, but requires registration.

The site says:

Processing.Android: Open-Source for Mobile Innovation brings together internationally recognized innovators from the open source software community, Chicago based startup companies, and students and academics from the areas of Art and Design, Computer Science, and Information Sciences. Keynote speakers Ben Fry and Casey Reas present the latest edition of Processing targeting Android devices, designed to simplify and streamline prototyping and development for mobile platforms… Join us for the first public summit to hold Processing.Android workshops, presentations, and panel discussions. The event is free and open to the public. Workshops require prior registration.

I’m giving a presentation:

Coding with Processing as a Design Practice
Projects created with Processing, an open-source programming environment for visual designers and artists, are used to show the potential of writing custom software as a design methodology. Examples range from dynamic information visualization to art installations to object fabrication.

And teaching a workshop:

Introduction to Processing for Programmers
This workshop for intermediate-level programmers (and up) is a brief introduction to using the Processing graphics library and environment. We’ll cover how to code 2D and 3D interactive graphics and how to use libraries to extend the base software into other domains. This workshop covers the basics of Processing and assumes the participant understands programming fundamentals from variables to object-oriented techniques.

This exhibition runs from 11 Sep to 3 Nov 2010. It features the Process Compendium 2004-2010 (A), fifteen c-prints that archive the Process series, as well as new software and prints based on Process 18. The gallery is located at Tucholskystr. 37

More photos of the exhibition are available at http://reas.com

Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture is now officially published:

Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture
Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams, LUST
Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN 9781568989372
7 x 8.5 inches (17.8 x 21.6 cm)
Paperback, 176 pages

Chandler and I started the project at the beginning of the summer 2007 with a workshop titled “Form + Code” at the Telic Arts Exchange in Los Angeles (19 July 2007 from 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm). The Dutch design studio LUST was folded in to the team in November of the same year. We developed the book with Chandler and myself primarily curating the images and developing the text and LUST leading the visual communication and layout exploration. The project was taken to some extreme variations as we explored the material. The primary consideration that we wanted the book to be as affordable and widely available as possible drove many of the decisions including the format (a small paperback) and the publisher (Princeton Architectural Press).

The book grew out of two overlapping desires. First, Chandler and I spend much of our lives working with UCLA undergraduates in the Department of Design Media Arts and we’re continuously developing lectures and examples for them. Form+Code was developed to give them a broad understanding of how code is used within the visual arts. Second, after completing Processing: a Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists, I had the desire to make a book about the same topic, but from a totally different perspective. That book taught the reader how to program, but it didn’t discuss why it’s an interesting thing for a designer or artist to consider. Form+Code is a non-technical introduction, while Processing: A Programming Handbook is a rigorous technical foundation.

Here’s some text from the formal book proposal to Princeton Architectural Press completed in August 2008:

Form+Code discusses the role of software in visual design, art, and architecture. It hopes to generate interest in creating visual and spatial form with software across diverse fields by focusing on the history, theory, and practice of software in the arts. The book is about one quarter text and three quarters images. It is organized around two parallel narratives: one told through images and captions, and the other through essays with related diagrams and images. This allows the book to be read cover-to-cover or leisurely looked through as a source of inspiration.

The book is divided into seven chapters: What is Code?, Computers and Form, Repetition, Transformation, Parameters, Visualization, and Simulation. The first two chapters set the foundation for the rest of the book by discussing the history of the computer in the arts and how software is used to create form. The five themes of repetition, transformation, parameters, visualization, and simulation are deeply linked to code. Each of these sections begin with an essay to define the territory, continues with images and captions, and concludes with code examples written in a few designer-friendly programming language such as Processing and ActionScript (the code won’t be included in the book, but will be available from the URL www.formandcode.com). Form+Code is not a programming tutorial; its goal is to inspire though the discussion of themes and projects.

…

Unlike many other books, the visual design of Form+Code is a close collaboration between the primary text authors (Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams) and the primary visual authors (LUST). The visual layout will be almost conventional, but will include details that illustrate the marriage of code and form. These details will further convey the primary content of the book.

We are patterning the structure of Form+Code closely on Ellen Lupton’s Thinking with Type. We feel this book is a superb synthesis of text and image; it’s the right amount of content to provide a solid introduction to its subject, while brief enough to make it manageable and affordable. We strive to reach this balance and to appeal to a similar audience of students, educators, and professionals. We’re also highly influenced by Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Artists and Designers, written by Casey Reas and Ben Fry. In a way, Form+Code, is a prequel to this book. The Processing book is a 736 page textbook primarily printed in black and white, but its subject matter is highly visual. Form+Code presents much of the background research for the Processing book in a full-color and image-heavy presentation.

There could be many books written in relation to the topics of form and code. The Form+Code book is written for students, educators, and professionals in the fields of design, art, and architecture. It’s intended to provide a foundation for and/or augment academic courses related to “digital design”, “interactive media”, “computational design”, “media art”, “introduction to computer graphics” “introduction to programming“, and other related areas. The book is also meant to be appealing and appropriate for people outside of academic institutions, but involved in the above mentioned fields. It is equally appropriate for non-specialists who are interested in these areas. The book is very visual, but the text is rigorously researched and provides clear context for the images. It is not a reference book or a technical manual; it is an introduction to a deep topic and therefore will be engaging to read. All content is framed within the context of the arts. The book is intended as a foundation text and there are no prerequisites.

To learn more about the book, please visit the website http://formandcode.com.

Clad, a collaboration with davidclovers, will be exhibited at the 12th International Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy. Clad is part of the Hong Kong Pavillion’s exhibition titled Quotidian Architectures located at the Arsenale, Campo dello Tana, Castello 2126. Clad is a group of four glass fiber reinforced concrete (GFRC) prototypes for Lunar House. The exhibition is open from 29 August to 21 November 2010.

Chandler and I are happy to announce a book launch party for Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture at Telic Arts Exchange in Los Angeles on Saturday, 4 September from 5 – 7pm. Please join us. We’ll have a toast at 6:30 to thank the many book contributors who’ll be there. Champagne and snacks will be served and we’ll have copies of the book on hand. Directions to Telic (951 Chung King Road Los Angeles, CA 90012) are available on their website.

After spending about quadruple the time we allotted for it, the formandcode.com website for our forthcoming book Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture is online. The site includes photos of the book and the code for each chapter’s examples (the code isn’t printed in the book), as well as the Contents, Bibliography, Links to people featured in the book, and more. Here’s the official description for the book:

Once the exclusive domain of programmers, code is now being used by a new generation of designers, artists, and architects eager to explore how software can enable innovative ways of generating form and translating ideas. Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture offers an in-depth look at the use of software in a wide range of creative disciplines. This visually stimulating survey introduces readers to over 250 significant works and undertakings of the past 60 years in the fields of fine and applied art, architecture, industrial design, digital fabrication, visual cinema, photography, typography, interactive media, gaming, artificial intelligence (AI), artificial life (a-life), and graphic design, including data mapping and visualizations, and all forms of new media and expression.

The book will be available on 1 September 2010 and is currently available for pre-order at Amazon, etc.

Adam Lerner’s Mixed Taste format (”Tag Team Lectures on Unrelated Topics”) from the MCA Denver was brought to Anderson Ranch for the annual National Council Celebration. I gave a twenty-minute presentation on Data Visualization (based on the Visualization chapter in Form+Code) which was preceded by an amazing presentation on Fly Tying. The question and answer session that followed the presentations was a game where the audience made connections between the topics.