Georg Nees - Art

Art

Nees began programming computers in 1959. Circa 1965, while working at Siemens in Erlangen, Germany, he began writing programs in ALGOL that used random number generators to generate drawings automatically by controlling a Graphomat Z64, a primitive flat-bed pen plotter designed by Konrad Zuse. In order to create this art, Nees also wrote some of the world's first graphics libraries, packages named G1, G2, and G3 that extended the ALGOL programming language by adding commands for controlling a plotter and generating random numbers.

In Nees' work "Locken" (1965), the path of the plotter's pen follows a sequence of circular arcs whose lengths and radii are randomly generated, subject to the constraint that they remain within the rectangular frame; however, Nees intervened manually in the production of the artwork by determining when the image was complete. Another piece, variously called "Schotter", "Gravel Stones", or "Cubic Disarray" and created by Nees between 1968 and 1971, depicts a transition from order to chaos: a regular grid of evenly-spaced squares at the top of the image is randomly turned and displaced until, at the bottom of the image, the grid is completely disrupted.

Nees's artwork "Sculpture" (1968) was one of the world's first computer-generated sculptures; it was exhibited at the 1969 Venice Biennale. It takes the form of a set of square indentations in a square wooden board, created by a computer-controlled automatic milling machine. Some of Nees' works, including "Gravel Stones" and a two-dimensional pattern for "Sculpture", are in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. A retrospective exhibition of his works was shown at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany in 2006, in honor of his 80th birthday.