Hans Dehlinger Interview

Hans Dehlinger, born 1939 in Germany, is one of the pioneers of generative art. He first met computers in the early 1960s while studying architecture in Stuttgart, where he studied under the philosopher Max Bense alongside Frieder Nake, then continued at UC Berkeley with an M.Arch and PhD and worked as an environmental planner and architect. In 1980 he became Professor of Industrial Design at the University of Kassel, where he taught until 2004. In the early 1980s he began making art with computers, focusing on algorithmically generated line drawings executed on pen plotters. His programs, often written in Python, control angle, line count, repetition and rotation, and he works along a spectrum from one pass processes, where the program draws with no visual feedback, to composite processes built in steps. The lines form delicate structures or dense textures, from fine gray pencil fields to thick bundles. His drawings sit in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Block Museum of Art and the Anne and Michael Spalter Digital Art Collection, and he is a member of the Algorists. Late in life he found a new audience in crypto art: he is represented by EXPANDED.ART in Berlin, which brought his LINE CUBES to Foundation and released the FIBO collection, with physical work sold through Kate Vass Galerie.

Algorithmic line drawings executed by pen plotters on paper, and more recently digital editions of the same generative programs. Named bodies of work include LINE CUBES, CODED CUBES, PLOTTED LINES, FIBO and his Fibonacci fragment drawings, many built from fuzzy bundles of straight lines controlled by code and chance.

• Pioneering plotter drawing practice begun in the early 1980s
• LINE CUBES, brought to Foundation by EXPANDED.ART
• FIBO, a colorful generative collection built on the Fibonacci sequence
• Work in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Spalter Digital Art Collection
• Student of Max Bense, member of the Algorists
• Professor of Industrial Design, University of Kassel, 1980 to 2004

On the show