Herbert W. Franke was represented at the Venice Biennale in 1970 with a silkscreen from his QUADRATE series. It is his first digitally computer-generated work in which he collaborated with an algorithm.
The square picture is made up of three types of elements that differ in size and color. They were distributed across the screen using a random number generator. The number of elements in each of the three groups depends on the knowledge of information aesthetics, which shows which group deserves the most attention: the few large squares. And which is perceived as the dominant element of the picture: the medium-sized squares? The smallest elements, on the other hand, form the background, so to speak, and are given the least attention.
The series was created with the IBM 1130 system at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, Munich, developed by the Institute for Communications Engineering at the Technical University of Munich, and developed by the scientific project manager for development and construction, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Georg Färber. At that time, he was an assistant at the TU Institute.