{Software} Structures by Casey Reas, Jared Tarbell, Robert Hodgin and William Ngan

This online commission for the Whitney Museum’s Artport was created by Casey Reas as a way to explain generative art’s ability to visualize the same simple instructions in many different ways depending on the execution of the artist’s algorithm. The technique is rooted in the instruction-based wall drawings of Sol LeWitt. {Software} Structures by Casey Reas, alongside collaborators Jared Tarbell, Robert Hodgin, and William Ngan, investigated the relationship between algorithmic rigor and artistic fluidity. Inspired by Sol LeWitt’s conceptual methodologies, Reas reimagined the creation of art, making programming as immediate and fluid as drawing. By spending initial days crafting core technical code, he then engaged with this foundation intuitively for months, akin to modifying a sketch, thus allowing for dynamic and iterative creation without the constraints of the original algorithms. This process culminated in artworks that, rather than being direct outputs of code, emerged from processes of pre-planned structures and real-time artistic intervention. This approach not only echoed LeWitt’s wall drawings, which separate the conception of art from its execution by involving external actors, but also implemented these concepts through software, where the 'actors' were replaced by dynamic, interactive systems. These software structures, therefore, did not merely replicate physical artworks digitally but transformed them.