Herbert W. Franke — Math Art — Apple II works and Cybernetical Aesthetics

1980

Artists: Herbert W. Franke · Year: 1980 · Medium: Personal-computer algorithmic graphics — Texas Instruments TI 99/4 and Apple II / Apple IIGS; BASIC and assembly; screen photography and printer output · Substrate: TI 99/4 (gift from Texas Instruments, 1979) and Apple II / Apple IIGS (from 1980); hand-coded BASIC routines for ZENTRUM (1982) and the Math Art series 1980–1995 · Place: Munich, Germany · Institution: Independent practice; Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich, lectureship in Cybernetical Aesthetics, 1973–1997 Across the 1980s and into the mid-1990s, Franke moved his practice from mainframe and plotter to the personal computer. The first machine was a Texas Instruments TI 99/4, given to him by TI in 1979; from 1980 onward he worked principally on the Apple II and later the Apple IIGS, hand-coding generative routines in BASIC and in assembly where speed required. The output was screen images photographed off the CRT and printer output, a substrate and aesthetic distinct from his 1960s plotter-line work. The canonical work of this period is ZENTRUM, written in 1982 in Apple II BASIC — a body of recursive, mathematically-derived images that ran the personal computer's RGB display as a substrate for systematic visual investigation. The broader output of the period circulated as the Math Art series, dated 1980–1995 in the artist's own statements. Where the 1960s plotter drawings had been austere black-and-white line, the Apple II work used the personal machine's color display: fractal fields, Mandelbrot and Julia iterations, Lissajous interference patterns, and recursive geometric studies that treated the screen pixel as a primitive rather than the plotter pen. In parallel — and through the same years — Franke held a lectureship at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich, from 1973 until 1997, teaching what he called Cybernetical Aesthetics: a course on computational art grounded in Max Bense's information aesthetics and in his own physics training. The LMU lectureship is the single longest continuous teaching position any first-generation computer artist held in any university, and through it Franke trained a generation of German-speaking artists and theorists in a rigorously formal account of generative practice. The Math Art series is the under-told middle chapter of Franke's career. His 1950s oscillograms have, since the 2021 Quantum drop, received their late retrospective attention; his 2021–22 NFT work, by virtue of its closing-of-the-circle quality, has been written about. The 1980–1995 Apple II work — fifteen years of dense, methodical, prolific output — has been comparatively under-documented. It is, by volume, the largest single body of work Franke produced, and it is the chapter that makes his trajectory continuous. Oscilloscope, mainframe plotter, Apple II, blockchain — same investigation, four substrates, seven decades. Lore Franke kept his working Apple II hardware in his Munich apartment into the 2010s and would still demonstrate the original 1980s algorithms on the original hardware for visiting interviewers — long after both his 1950s oscillograms and his 2020s NFT releases had become the headline material. His Apple II disks, original BASIC source listings, and accompanying paper notebooks are preserved with his papers at the art meets science Foundation. The LMU lectureship ran twenty-four academic years; he taught the same Cybernetical Aesthetics course, periodically revised, across that entire span. Sources • Franke, Herbert W. — ZENTRUM (1982, BASIC on Apple II) — Math Art series, 1980–1995 • ISEA / FISEA 1988 — Franke statement on Math Art series • EXPANDED.ART — "Herbert W. Franke's Art 2.0" essay (gallery archive) • art meets science – Foundation Herbert W. Franke — Franke personal-computer working files, Apple II disks, original BASIC listings • Monoskop — Herbert W. Franke biography, LMU Munich lectureship 1973–1997