Matthias Müller-Prove

Frieder Nake

Frieder Nake (b. 1938, Stuttgart) is a German mathematician and one of the "3N" founders of computer art — Nake, Nees, Noll. Studying mathematics at the TH Stuttgart (Diplom 1964, doctorate in probability theory 1967) and attending Max Bense's lectures, he was the research assistant who wrote the driver software connecting the computing center's SEL ER56 computer to its Zuse Graphomat Z64 flatbed drawing machine — and from 1963 he used that machine to make some of the first algorithmic drawings in existence. In November 1965 he and Georg Nees showed "Computer-Grafik Programme" at Galerie Wendelin Niedlich in Stuttgart, the third exhibition of computer art ever held; Cybernetic Serendipity (ICA London, 1968) and the Venice Biennale (1970) followed. Then he stopped: after some 300–400 works between 1965 and 1969, he published "There Should Be No Computer Art" (PAGE, October 1971), a political refusal to keep making art as market objects. Professor of computer science at the University of Bremen since 1972 (after two years at UBC in Vancouver), he has spent five decades teaching, writing on semiotics and the aesthetics of computing, and running the compArt database of digital art — the field's own historian, and one of its inventors. I enjoy Frieder Nake's work and like his almost gnome-like playfulness. I got to meet him in person at the Generative Art Summit Berlin — the Herbert W. Franke Foundation's conference at the Akademie der Künste on Hanseatenweg, July 3rd and 4th, 2024 — where he spoke in the Hall of Fame session alongside A. Michael Noll.

Artist's website (compart.uni-bremen.de) ↗

7 physical works