The Foundational Aesthetica Published by Max Bense is Finished

This 348-page tome by Max Bense, Aesthetica. Einführung in die neue Aesthetik, contained four volumes and a manifesto.

Bense published the four volumes between 1954 and 1960; the 1965 edition collects them and adds the manifesto. The works “anticipated the principles of computer art” and were foundational to the development of cybernetics.

Bense was one of the first theorists to recognize the potential of computer technology as a medium for art. In Aesthetica, he introduced the concept of “generative aesthetics,” and the ability to “program the beautiful” which emphasized the use of algorithms to create surprising and novel artistic forms.

This idea inspired artists and programmers to experiment with computer-generated art, leading to the birth of computer art as a distinct genre in the 1960s, where Bense’s impact was felt particularly in Europe at the University of Stuttgart with students Georg Nees and Frieder Nake, who would make some of the earliest computer art. Bense’s work helped establish the theoretical foundations for computer art and its potential as a medium for artistic expression.

From a previous entry on the importance of cybernetics:

Cybernetics would play a vital role in both the birth of digital art and artificial intelligence, thus making it one of the single most important moments on the timeline. Max Bense and his role at the University of Stuttgart explains the connection to computer art, specifically. He supervised Georg Nees’s doctorate and Frieder Nake sat in on his lectures, leaving an indelible marks on their thinking that last to this day, as this 2018 talk by Nake demonstrates.

For artificial intelligence, cybernetics was an early attempt to unite machines and organic beings in a functional way, as it sought a theory of control, feedback and communication applicable to machines as well as animals. In the book Art in the Age of Machine Learning, author Sofian Audry argues that the concept of machine learning dates back to cybernetics.