BREMEN.- The Kunsthalle Bremen holds one of the largest collections of computer art in the world. In 2018, the museum is taking the opportunity to celebrate three anniversaries through the presentation of an exhibition of this extensive international collection. “Programmed Art: Early Computer Graphics” shows a selection of computer-generated graphics from the Bremen collection which were created between 1955 and 1979. The show also presents two new works by Frieder Nake, one of the founders of computer art. Nake was directly involved in the conceptual design of the exhibition.
Fifty years ago, in 1968, two events promoted the international recognition of computer art: The exhibition “Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts” held first in London and subsequently in New York, San Francisco and Washington D.C., and “Tendencies 4: Computers and Visual Research” with its associated conference held in Zagreb. These events resulted in a new aesthetic discovery of forms which included computer-generated music, choreography, texts, computer films and computer graphics. In addition, Frieder Nake, one of the pioneers of computer art is celebrating his 80th birthday in 2018.
The first artistic computer graphics were created in industrial and university settings and were primarily developed by scientists and technicians. Toward the end of the 1960s, artists increasingly became interested in the new technique, in no small part due to improved generation methods using plotters. However, there were also obvious links in terms of content to the concrete art movement since these artists placed a strong emphasis on geometrical algorithms.
Once of the main principles of early computer graphics was the introduction of systematically calculated random variables, better known as pseudo-randomness. The programs determine the composition and formal aspects of the images and prevent chaos; the pseudo-randomness generators determine the concrete variables used within the image parameters. The use of chance and randomness in art has a long tradition. After World War II, concrete artists and artists of the Fluxus and Happenings movements applied randomness as a mathematic (algorithmic) principle. Computer artists made major contributions to this. The use of randomness allowed artists to make inroads into new imagery and to “discover combinations of forms that had never been seen before in nature or in museums,” according to Vera Molnar, one of the pioneers of computer art.
Frieder Nake (b. 16 December 1938 in Stuttgart) is a mathematician, computer scientists, and semiotician. He studied mathematics at the Technical University of Stuttgart where he worked at the computer centre. He received his PhD in probability theory in 1967. In 1968-69, he was a postdoctoral fellow in computer science at the University of Toronto and from 1970–72 he was an assistant professor in computer science at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He has lived in Bremen since 1972 and until 2004 he was a professor for graphic data processing and interactive systems at the University of Bremen. Since his retirement, he has been a visiting professor and then a visiting lecturer at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen and has continued his teaching and research at the University of Bremen. After 1980, he was a visiting professor at universities around the world including Vienna, Oslo, Boulder (Colorado, USA), Xian (Shaanxi, China), Aarhus, Lübeck, Basle, Krems, San José (Costa Rica), Shanghai, Stuttgart, and Lüneburg.
Along with Georg Nees and Michael A. Noll, Frieder Nake is one of the founding fathers of digital and algorithmic computer graphics. In 1963, he developed a drawing program at the Technical University of Stuttgart which allowed the institution’s computer (SEL ER65) to be coupled with the Graphomat (ZUSE Z64), the recently purchased, legendary drawing machine invented by Konrad Zuse. He subsequently created the first drawings of an aesthetic quality.
Frieder Nake has exhibited in London, Zagreb, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Bejing, at the Venice Biennale, the Zentrum Paul Klee in Berne, the ZKM / Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach and the Sprengel Museum in Hanover. His works were last exhibited at the Kunsthalle Bremen in 2004.
