The Pioneer of Generative Art: Georg Nees

The pioneer of computer art Georg Nees passed away on 3 January 2016, at the age of 89. He was the first to exhibit computer-generated drawings, in Stuttgart in February 1965. Influenced by Max Bense’s information aesthetics (a rational aesthetics of the object based on Shannon’s information theory), Nees completed his PhD thesis in 1968 (in German). Its title, Generative Computergraphik, is an expression of the new movement of generative art and design. Trained as a mathematician, Nees participated in many early, but also recent, displays of computer art. After retiring from his research position at Siemens in Erlangen, he again concentrated on computer-generated art and researched issues of digital coloring but also wrote several novels expressing his philosophy of a nonreligious, human-made culture.