Nawon Choi— Looking Outward 02

Generative Art— Georg Nees

After looking through various generative art/artists, I found one that really stood out to me. It was Georg Nees’ Schotter. I admire its simplicity— the algorithm incrementally increases the amount of disorder in two variables: position and rotation. All other factors remain the same, the size of each square, and the number of squares in each row. I love the way that the orderly squares gradually descend into chaos, as if it’s falling apart, or crumbling away.

Georg Nees was actually a mathematician and physicist who also worked as a software engineer at Siemens. He is known today as one of the pioneers of computer graphics and art. It’s fascinating to see how someone with a non-traditional “art” background could be one of the first to create generative computer art. It’s also interesting to see the way his background informed his art— his works are very well thought-out and calculated to create aesthetic compositions.