Frank Böttger

Frank Böttger (b. 1946, Speyer) came to computer art from the engineering side: trained first as an electrician, then at the School of Engineering in Kaiserslautern, he joined the computing department of the aerospace company Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm in 1969. There, between 1970 and 1972, he was part of MBB Computer Graphics — the interdisciplinary group initiated by Winfried Fischer that included fellow engineers Aron Warszawski and Rolf Wölk and painter Sylvia Roubaud working with programmer Gerold Weiss. Böttger wrote his own FORTRAN IV programs for an IBM 360 Model 50 mainframe, drew them on the Kongsberg Kingmatic flatbed plotter — at 2 × 6 meters the largest computerized drawing machine of its time in Europe — and editioned them as serigraphs. His works from the project include Interpolation und Rotation, Families of Circles, Kreisfolgen, Quadratformationen, and Drehflächen (all 1972), plus joint pieces with Warszawski. The group's prints were published in Johann Willsberger's Computer Graphics (1972) and intended as a contribution to the cultural program of the 1972 Munich Olympics; they were shown at Tendencies 5 in Zagreb (1973) and, decades later, in Ex Machina — Frühe Computergrafik bis 1979 at Kunsthalle Bremen (2007). The ZKM holds several of his 1972 works. Böttger has lived since the 1980s in Chapel Hill, Brisbane, Australia.

1 physical work