The last time Reas was on the Power 100 list, there was no such thing
as bitcoin, blockchain or NFT. There was however a burgeoning digital art scene making sense of the internet explosion and increasingly accessible computing power. Reas, a student of digital art pioneer John Maeda while he was at MIT, now professor at UCLA, has for two decades explored the juncture of visual art and technology, cofounding the open-source visual design software Processing in 2001. But with the advent of blockchain databases and the NFT explosion, Reas saw the need for a critical and informed platform for the most interesting digital art being made for NFT, which could also support artists financially. The website Feral File, launched in 2020, has become an important showcase for the broad church of net and digital art, with curated exhibitions of work by artists including Zach Blas, Orlan, LaTurbo Avedon and the AI entity Botto – all for sale as NFTs, of course.