'Programming the Beautiful' Informatic Color and Aesthetic Transformations in Early Computer Art

Color has long been at home in the domains of classical art and aesthetics. However, with the introduction of computer art in Germany in the early 1960s, a new 'rational theory' of art, media and color emerged. Many believed this new 'science' of art would generate computer algorithms which would enable new media aesthetic 'principles to be formulated mathematically' - thus ending the lofty mystifications that have, for too long, been associated with Romantic notions about artwork and art-making. Although, as German computer artist Herbert Franke noted, 'Traditional aesthetic modes of expression are of little avail to the artist who works with technical systems, particularly computers', I argue herein that the shifts in aesthetic theory brought about by the introduction of computer art are more complex than a clear-cut subsumption to mathematics, information theory or cybernetics. While the 'Programming the Beautiful' project that began in Europe in the 1960s - the three-fold rationalization of the artist, the artwork and color - has been largely realized, nonetheless, today we find ourselves seeped in the neo-Romanticization of new media art, the reglorification of the role of the artist, and new digital color - ironically, the exact opposite of what the project for rational art initially sought.