A National production: Casey Reas offers inside view of videos for top alt-rock band
Professor Casey Reas writes software to explore emergent systems. His work brings together conceptualism, systems theory, experimental film and animation, and drawing. While software is at the core of his practice, his work spans installation, works on paper, and live performance.' His software, prints, and installations have been featured in over one hundred solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
"The National recently released its seventh album, “Sleep Well Beast,” and the alt-rock band, which in recent years has sold out Los Angeles’ Wiltern and Greek Theatre, is scheduled to perform at the Hollywood Bowl on Oct. 11. The new album has earned wide critical praise (“an emotional battlefield, beautifully drawn, familiar and true,” said Rolling Stone), and yielded the Grammy-nominated band’s first-ever No. 1 song on the adult alternative charts.The record’s rollout also had a key UCLA connection: Four of the songs were accompanied by videos directed by Casey Reas, professor of design media arts in the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. Reas is a co-creator of an open-source programming language called Processing, which is used in the visual arts. His work has been exhibited in art galleries and projected onto buildings around the world.
The seeds of his collaboration with the National were planted in the early 1990s: Reas met bassist Scott Devendorf and singer Matt Berninger, who would later become two-fifths of the National, when they all were graphic design students at the University of Cincinnati, and he even played drums in a band with them. Although he has worked frequently with music and musicians over the years — his work served as a theme for stage design on a tour by the band Yeasayer — the National videos were Reas’ largest music-related collaboration so far.
In an email interview, Reas offered insights about the vision behind the new work and the mix of art and technology he used to give the videos their distinctive look."— Sean Brenner, Sep. 21, 2017
Read the full article at the UCLA Newsroom website.
Read more about Professor Casey Reas here.