ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 traces the first historical emergence of digital art in the 1960s and 1970s, paying special attention to the work of A. Michael Noll, Georg Nees, Frieder Nake, and Manfred Mohr. The important influence of Max Bense’s ‘generative aesthetics’ is traced in relation to this work. The early developments of digital art under Bense’s influence had a predominantly abstract orientation – distributing signs as fields in alignment with the picture plane, or creating three-dimensional optical effects through forms projected obliquely from the plane.
