Casey Reas: Interview Excerpts from CLOUDS (2014)
Channel: The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry
Date: 2023-04-06

This video presents excerpts of raw interview footage from CLOUDS (2014). Directed by Jae Minard and James George, CLOUDS is an interactive, generative, computational documentary that allows the viewer to explore different perspectives on the intersection of code and culture. Filmed using the RGBD 3D cinema format and created entirely with open-source software, CLOUDS uses a data-driven story engine to present an endless, ever-changing conversation about the role of computational thinking in contemporary arts and design. More information is at cloudsdocumentary.com.

Casey Reas (@reas) writes software that explores the simple rules underlying complex systems. His short text instructions create images through the results of emergent processes. He studied in the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media lab from 1999 to 2001. With Ben Fry, Reas initiated Processing, a free and open programming language now used by thousands of artists and designers worldwide. [2014 Biography]

00:05 1. beginnings
00:39 2. Processing, what is it?
00:54 3. sketching with code
01:14 4. tangle
01:50 5. Borrowing from culture
02:11 6. Systems theory
02:48 7. emergence
03:45 8. pseudo-science
04:00 9. futurist
04:09 10. understanding future
04:33 11. synthetic biology
04:59 12. Craig Venter
05:25 13. Birth of processing
06:33 14. Design by numbers to processing
07:05 15. Processing open
07:23 16. Processing addons
08:08 17. pushing software beyond
08:19 18. group teaching
08:36 19. People would pop up
08:50 20. Style diffuses
09:15 21. 10Print
10:27 22. randomness
11:40 23. Software is what i love the most
11:58 24. teaching at UCLA
12:22 25. branching off branching
12:59 26. Ideally it goes beyond my imagination
13:07 27. Tree of Life
14:11 28. passionate about cinema
14:15 29. It's not cinema not a game
14:50 30. radically different from a videogame
15:05 31. New modes of expression
15:33 32. Indie Game movement
16:11 33. Started small
16:37 34. Scale 1
17:03 35. Scale 2
17:18 36. Scale 3
17:38 37. old media
18:08 38. learning from precursors
18:32 39. ideas of art history
18:50 40. thinking about time
19:05 41. Programming at 26
19:22 42. Computer as collaborator
19:33 43. What is emergence?
20:03 44. Developing a microworld
20:21 45. Massive parallel systems
20:39 46. You need noise
21:15 47. Tron
21:51 48. Something new, totally engrossing

Directors: Jae Minard and James George
Executive Producer: Golan Levin (CMU)
Producer: Winslow Porter
Design Director: Bradley G Munkowitz