@REAS #001 — 19 February 2026
I’m just starting to figure this out.
I’ve never had a newsletter or mailing list. I’ve hosted my own websites since 1995 and been on Twitter almost daily since 2008, and for a long time that felt right. I relied on the galleries I work with and other collaborators to get the word out. The conditions online are shifting quickly, so I’m experimenting with something more direct and personal. Back to email.
If you’d like to receive infrequent updates—notes on work, research, teaching, and exhibitions—you can subscribe here:
I’ll figure out the tone and length of these as I go, so here’s the first iteration:
At the start of 2026, I’m wrapping up a new exhibition opening in early March in collaboration with Feral File and Art Blocks. Last year, I premiered new work with bitforms and with DAM Projects. I’m currently teaching my Generative Art course at UCLA and developing a new working group through Social Software. More details on these and other projects below!
Ex Nihilo (Cosmos)
Ex Nihilo (Cosmos) is the most recent work in the Still Life series. It extends the project’s engagement with the five Platonic solids, but pushes further into decomposition. This new exhibition features a generative artwork in a series of 256 instances and five new drawings. The work will be released in early March simultaneously on Art Blocks and Feral File. The title references the generative condition of computer graphics: images emerging ex nihilo—from code rather than from physical materials. The work continues my interest in how classical metaphysics persists inside contemporary computational systems. The work is contextualized with a conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist and an amazing new text by Zsofi Valyi-Nagy. The text from Zsofi articulates things that I haven’t been able to communicate well myself. I’m excited for you to read her lucid thoughts about the work.
Feral File’s FF1 and FFP
I co-founded Feral File in 2020. Over the past five years, we’ve organized 50 exhibitions, working with more than 266 artists and 40 curators. Last year we moved in an unexpected direction: designing hardware to support individuals and institutions in showing digital art. The FF1 Art Computer and the FFP Panel together form the Feral File Digital Art System—a modular setup designed specifically for presenting software-based work. I wrote and shared a short text about my first experience with FF1.
New REAS.com
After many years of incremental updates, I’ve rebuilt REAS.com from the ground up. The new structure clarifies the relationships between individual works, series, and larger categories. It reflects how I now think about the work as overlapping systems—Process, Atomism, In Silico, ULTRACONCENTRATED, and others. It’s less a portfolio and more of a map. The new site is augmented by the INDEX, a complete catalog of everything I’ve released since 2000.
In Silico @ Gradient Canopy
Along with other artists working with machine learning—Refik Anadol, Linda Dounia Rebeiz, Michael Joo, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Rashaad Newsome, Sara Rosalena, Sasha Stiles, Trevor Paglen, Certain Measures, and Clement Valla—I received a commission to create new work for the Gradient Canopy building, a home for Google’s AI research.
For the project, I developed a new dataset and trained a model across three scales: microscope images of California native plants, high-resolution scans of those same specimens, and satellite images of the landscapes where they grow. The work extends my ongoing interest in machine learning and nineteenth-century chemical photography—bridging two distinct moments in the history of technical images.
The team produced a one-minute video to show the process behind the project. Related work in this series was featured in the November 2025 issue of Artforum with an introductory text and portfolio. More on the series at REAS.com.
Zero One @ Art Basel Miami
New work from In Silico was presented in the inaugural Zero One section at Art Basel Miami Beach last December with bitforms, in dialogue with selections from Manfred Mohr and Maya Man. The context was meaningful, placing my recent machine learning works within other generations of computational practices represented by Manfred and Maya’s work.
In collaboration with Erika Weitz, I produced two new analog chemical photographs in the Technical Image series. These works extend the ongoing translation between dataset, software system, and material surface.
Earthly Delights 4.2 premiered as well. This iteration moves in a slower, more ambient direction. It draws from the IS-2 dataset originally developed for the Gradient Canopy commission, continuing the series’ exploration of synthetic botanical space through generative variation.
Layer Canvas
My work in Zero One with bitforms was presented on a Layer Canvas, a new initiative from Angelo Sotira. I created two new artworks for the Canvas system (Process 21 and Network F) and licensed another (Still Life (HSB E)). It’s the highest-quality hardware and display I’ve seen for digital art. I did an interview with them and I’m happy to share it with you.
Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (SARF)
I’m part of the 2025 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship program, with my site visits taking place in 2026. I’ll spend time in the archives at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in March and at Cooper Hewitt this summer, looking closely at how artists use scores, diagrams, and notation within their process and work. The project began as Rewilding – New Performance Scores. It has since migrated into Scores for Social Software—a shift in emphasis, but grounded in the same archival research.
OPEN CALL: Scores for Social Software, Cycle 2
Social Software is launching an OPEN CALL for the Cycle 2 working group. We’re inviting artists, designers, and researchers to propose new Scores for Social Software—works that define conditions for interaction. These may take the form of text, diagrams, instructions, software, or hybrid structures.
Scores for Social Software builds on the tradition of Fluxus scores, books like Notations (eds. John Cage and Allison Knowles), and the do it anthologies (ed. Hans Ulrich Obrist). We’ll explore the research of the recent compilation The Scores Project (eds. Gallope, Harren, Hicks). Our aim is not only to learn from these histories, but to extend them—testing what a score can be in the context of contemporary technological, social, and institutional systems.
New Classes @ UCLA: Art and the Internet, Generative Art
I’m a lifer at UCLA. I’ve been there since 2003, and it’s deeply woven into both my life and my work. As co-chair of the Department of Design Media Arts Curriculum Committee and Vice-Chair of the department, I’ve been part of a major restructuring over the past few years. We expanded the MFA in Media Art from two to three years and reworked the BA curriculum. Last year I added two new courses: Art and the Internet and Generative Art. Generative Art brings my teaching into even closer alignment with my studio practice.
This first newsletter got a little out of hand and longer than I expected. Thank you for tuning in and your interest. I hope to see you in 2026.
+++++ Casey