Max Bense

Max Bense was born in 1910 in Strasbourg. After his family was deported from Alsace-Lorraine following World War I, he attended school in Cologne and later studied physics, chemistry, mathematics, geology, and philosophy at the University of Bonn. He earned his doctorate in 1937 with a dissertation on quantum mechanics and the relativity of Dasein. A firm opponent of National Socialism, Bense rejected the anti-relativity ideology of Deutsche Physik, which limited his academic opportunities. In 1938, he worked as a physicist at Bayer AG in Leverkusen before being drafted into military service during World War II, where he served as a meteorologist and later as a medical technician. In 1945, he was appointed Chancellor of the University of Jena. After fleeing the Soviet zone in 1948, he joined the University of Stuttgart, where he became professor of philosophy and theory of science. He also taught at the Ulm School of Design and the Hamburg College for Visual Arts. Known for bridging science, aesthetics, and philosophy, Bense became professor emeritus in 1978 and died in Germany in 1990.

Bense’s work bridged philosophy, mathematics, semiotics, and aesthetics, laying a foundation for digital arts. In the 1950s, he pioneered lectures on semiotics in West Germany, introducing students early to Charles Sanders Peirce’s theories before they gained wider recognition. By the 1960s, his publications on aesthetic measures for fine art, literature, and music attracted broader attention across Europe. He introduced the concept of programming into aesthetics, positioning his Information Aesthetics as a theoretical basis for early computer visual research.

Leading the Stuttgart school, Bense fostered an international community around semiotics and concrete poetry, rejecting emotion-based judgments in favor of treating aesthetic objects as complex communicative signs open to mathematical analysis. Influenced by Max Bill, he taught at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, emphasizing the importance of information theory for post-war art and design. Bense played a key role in the emergence of computer-generated art by organizing early exhibitions of Georg Nees and Frieder Nake, advising the first computer art Ph.D., and helping launch the 1968 Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition. 

Bense’s philosophy combined rigorous mathematical and linguistic analysis of art and language, applying concepts from Wittgenstein, Leibniz, and Birkhoff. He distinguished aesthetic from semantic information and raised early ethical concerns about technology as a product of human intelligence and algorithms. Often positioned as a critical outsider, he challenged established institutions and cultural complacency. In the 1980s, he expanded his theories to visual media, contributing to early media studies and digital poetry, thus bridging classical aesthetics and emerging digital culture.

Bense and Nees were key players in shaping what we now recognize as early computer art. In 1965, Bense gave Nees the platform to showcase his computer-generated drawings at the University of Stuttgart’s Studiengalerie, an exhibition that’s widely credited as the very first public display of computer art. Alongside the show, they released rot 19. Computer-Grafik, a groundbreaking publication co-edited by both of them. It paired Nees’s algorithm-driven artworks with Bense’s essay on generative aesthetics, laying down some of the foundational ideas for how we think about computer art today.