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Frieder Nake «Polygon Drawings» | «Matrizenmultiplikation Serie 31» (detail), 1967
Frieder Nake, «Polygon Drawings», 1965
«Matrizenmultiplikation Serie 31» (detail), 1967 | © Frieder Nake
 


 
Frieder Nake «Polygon Drawings»Frieder Nake «Polygon Drawings» | «Matrizenmultiplikation Serie 31» (detail), 1967

Categories: Multimedia | Graphics

Keywords: Computer graphic

Relevant passages:

icon: authorClaudia Giannetti «Cybernetic Aesthetics and Communication»| icon: authorClaudia Giannetti «Aesthetic Paradigms of Media Art»


Germany
 

 Frieder Nake
«Polygon Drawings»

Along with George Nees, Max Bense’s student Frieder Nake was in 1965 among the first programmers to give the general public an opportunity of scrutinizing freely designed computer graphics produced on digital computers. The graphics were based on the interplay between a macro-aesthetic structure, a micro-aesthetic details and mediating random numbers. They were programmed first in a machine-based language (on SEL ER56), later in ALGOL 60 (on Telefunken TR4) and Fortran IV as well as PL/) (on IBM 360). One of the programs randomly chose a stochastic matrix, raised the quantities to powers, and then visualized the numerical results by allocating characters or colours according to their amount. For «Polygonzüge» a polygon is drawn randomly with many randomly generated sides and directions.