Frieder Nake

Born 1938 in Stuttgart/Germany.

From 1958 to 1964 Frieder Nake studied mathematics at the University of Stuttgart and wrote his doctoral dissertation in probability theory in 1967. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, he did research in computer art and graphics (1968/69). In 1970 he became an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, but returned to Germany when he accepted a full professorship of computer science at the University of Bremen in 1972.

Since 2005, he has also been teaching Digital Media at the University of the Arts, Bremen. His teaching and research activities are in computer graphics, digital media, computer art, design of interactive systems, computational semiotics, and general theory of computing.

He is currently leading an ambitious project on the history and algorithmics of early computer art, the compArt | center of excellence Digital Art in Bremen.

Selected publications: »The interface as sign and as aesthetic event«, in: Aesthetic computing, Cambridge 2006; »Zeigen, Zeichnen und Zeichen. Der verschwundene Lichtgriffel«, in: Mensch-Computer-Interface. Zur Geschichte und Zukunft der Computerbedienung, Bielefeld 2008; »Surface, interface, subface. Three cases of interaction and one concept«, in: Paradoxes of Interactivity. Perspectives for media theory, human-computer interaction, and artistic investigations, Bielefeld 2008; »The semiotic engine. Notes on the history of algorithmic images in Europe«, in: Art Journal 68, 2009; »Wurzeln und Zufall. Eine Sicht der Anfänge digitaler Kunst«, in: Digital Art, Cologne 2009; »Work, design, computers, artifacts«, in: (Re)Searching the digital Bauhaus, London 2009.