Golan Levin and Casey Reas, The Art of Code at Bitforms, New York

This exhibition featured Casey Reas’s Tissue, a continuation of Path from the year prior, which today is known as Phototaxis and can be found on Art Blocks. Levin exhibited his interactive work Meshy (1998).

The Art of Code at Bitforms, New York, spotlighted the early software works of Casey Reas and Golan Levin. Reas presented Tissue, an early foray into digital, generative systems with boundless outcomes, later evolving into Phototaxis on Art Blocks, exemplifying the algorithm’s long-form potential. Tissue, incorporating Braitenberg’s “vehicles” can be seen as primitive AI art.

Levin’s Meshy offered an immersive drawing space where user interactions shaped a responsive, animated mesh, evolving with each new line drawn, showcasing the fluidity between artist, audience and digital medium.

The Art of Code was the gallery’s second show, following the Inaugural Exhibition of November 2001, and its first two-person exhibition. bitforms, founded by Steve Sacks to bridge art and technological innovation, became a beacon for code-based art, notably after the release of Processing, invigorating the genre. Over the years, Bitforms has nurtured the art-tech nexus, displaying a spectrum from Beryl Korot’s textiles to Refik Anadol’s quantum computing art.