Basic Information
Description
“Computer Graphik von G Nees gezeichnet auf GRAPHOTMAT ZUSE Z 90 (computer graphic by G Nees drawn on Graphomat Zuse Z 90)” printed in plotter ink below the image
the drawing was produced at Siemens in Erlangen, Germany
description of the artwork is courtesy of Heike Werner Gallery:
“The typographical inscription indicates the model name of the drawing machine GRAPHOMAT ZUSE Z 90, this drawing machine was officially available from 1970 on. It cannot be excluded that the Siemens Research Center in Erlangen, where Nees worked from 1965 on and where this drawing was produced, had earlier access to this machine. The plot is therefore dated to around 1970.
Signal Ellipse by Georg Nees was originally generated in 1969, programmed in ALGOL for Siemens System 2002.
A similar drawing in black ink can be found in the renowned computer art collection of the Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany.
On the motif according to Nees p 287:
In 1969, Georg Nees completed his doctoral thesis “Generative Computergraphik” under Max Bense. The last image in his thesis is the computer-generated graphic “Signal Ellipse.” The motif is a model of information perception visualizing the “structure of the information field,” the reaction mechanism of a percipient to aesthetic information. This information field consists of an elliptic foreground, in which information is “activating” the percipient (the percipient´s focus), and a “passive, supporting” background.
In short:
The motif of this drawing is the closing illustration in Nees book »Generative Computergraphik«. He describes it as a case study demonstrating the organization of an information field by a recipient into a passive background and an active foreground.”
Detail images of the work
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