Author Description

This publication catalogs seven years of work created by C. E. B. Reas. It was published in an edition of five hundred to accompany the exhibition Process Compendium 2004 - 2010 at Gallery [DAM]Berlin in fall 2010. The artwork Process Compendium 2004 - 2010 is two editions of fifteen prints that archive Reas' Process 4 to Process 18. In Reas' schema, a Process defines an environment for Elements and determines how the relationships between the Elements are visualized. An Element is a simple machine that is comprised of a form and one or more behaviors. For instance, Element 1 takes the form of a circle and one of its behaviors moves it along a straight line at a constant speed. Process 4 fills a surface with Element 1 and draws a line between elements while they overlap. Each Process is a short text that defines a space to explore through multiple interpretations. The phenomenon of emergence is the core of the exploration. The creation of the work is idiosyncratic and pseudo-scientific, containing references ranging from the history of mathematics to the generation of artificial life. For example, the image on book cover is an interpretation of Process 13: Bisect a rectangular surface and define the dividing line as the origin for a large group of Element 1. When each Element moves beyond the surface, move its position back to the origin. Draw a line from the centers of Elements that are touching. Set the value of the shortest possible line to black and the longest to white, with varying grays representing values in between. The Process Compendium 2004 - 2010 catalog is the definitive documentation for this series of work. It presents the archive prints, alternate software interpretations, and the emergence of the forms through a series of time-lapse images. It ends with the complete text description for each Process and an illustrated catalog of all Process works created to date.