Casey Reas is well known for his software-based artwork, although his endeavors span from modest paper-based pieces to installations of citywide proportions. His approach strikes a balance between individual studio efforts and collaborative projects with architects and musicians. Together with Ben Fry in 2001, Reas launched Processing, an open-source programming language and environment designed specifically for the visual arts.
923 Empty Rooms is an evolution of the generative digital artwork An Empty Room, which was commissioned by LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab in conjunction with its exhibition Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982. The work is an homage to artist Victor Vasarely’s unrealized proposal for LACMA’s Art and Technology Program (1967–71). Envisioned during a period in which Vasarely was interested in cybernetics and permutation, the proposal defined a machine composed of lights arranged in a grid that would generate millions of different visual patterns related to his paintings. Estimated to cost $2 million to fabricate at the time, the project was deemed prohibitively expensive and was left unrealized. An Empty Room consists of a software-art tribute to Vasarely, beginning with his ideas of a “binary plastic language” and continuing into unknown territory.
This evolution of An Empty Room also employs generative methods. It utilizes six shapes, or colorforms, which can ultimately be ordered in a total of 923 combinations. The full NFT mint includes every possible combination of colorforms, with each unique work having between one to six shapes. 923 Empty Rooms #150 includes six shapes, resulting in 462 unique combinations.
Joel Ferree
2024