Manfred Mohr is one of the great names of algorithmic art. His work is most distinguished by its radically rational construction in ever increasing complexity. Already his first experiments in “computer art” were distinguished by a clear personal style. Soon he discovered the cube as an exciting topic that he has turned into his source of endless new discovery and inspiration, by following the cube into high dimensions.

Mohr’s career starts as a jazz musician on the saxophone. The lines and timbres of music have accompanied him after he had discovered the computer as the instrument for the realization of his ideas. He wanted to generate complex and surprising images of a clear and transparent underlying structure. The algorithmic description of what he wants to show is exactly the means to do this. In the algorithm he describes the totally determined structure that, when executed with pseudo-random numbers becoming the values of structural parameters, surprises in all its detail. Step by step through his work phases, Mohr has explored the multidimensional cube as a source of aesthetic processes. However, the cube and hypercube do not interest him as mathematical objects. He uses them as a source of visual complexity. In his dedication to the idea of the rationalistically determined experiment, Mohr’s art, in its rigour, may be compared to that of Josef Albers, the researcher of the interaction of color.