Siegfried Maser | i |
 
last name: Maser
first name: Siegfried
birthday: November 30, 1938
birth-place: Stuttgart (Germany)
death date: March 10, 2016
died in: Wuppertal (Germany)
Summary

Maser studied philosophy, mathematics, and physics at the Stuttgart Institute of Technology (now: University), and the University of Tübingen. In 1965, he received his PhD under Max Bense for his thesis entitled “Die ontologischen Grundlagen und ihre Folgen im Werk von Gottlob Frege” [The Ontological Foundations and their Consequences in the Work of Gottlob Frege]. He submitted his second doctoral thesis (the German Habilitation) in 1968 to the University of Stuttgart. Under the title, “Numerische Ästhetik” "[Numerical Aesthetics], it is a comprehensive account of formal methods in aesthetic judgment.

Since 1969, he was teaching at the University of Stuttgart, the Institute for Environmental Planning in Ulm (the former Hochschule für Gestaltung), State Academy of Fine Arts in Braunschweig and the Bergische Universität – University of Wuppertal. His teaching covered the fields of semiotics, information theory and communication theory, cybernetics, systems research and planning theory, as well as design theory.

Maser formulated the most distinct and comprehensive account of Information Aesthetics – the formal aesthetic theory based on Shannon’s information theory that Max Bense and others developed in the late 1950s and 1960s. As an aesthetics purely of the object (with no consideration of the perceiving and interpreting subject), information aesthetics was bound to fail. It was, nevertheless, a heroic attempt to formalize what can, perhaps, not be formalized.

[ZKM, 2010]

Biography

1958-1965 Studies of philosophy (with the emphasis on philosophy of sciece, cognitive science, logic and aesthetics), mathematics (geometry, topology and algebra) and physics (atom physics and elctrodynamics) in Stuttgart and Tübingen.
1965 Dissertation under Max Bense at the Stuttgart Institute of Technology on the “Grundlagen der Mathematik (Gottlob Frege: Logizismus)” [Basics of Mathematics (Gottlob Frege:Logicism)]
1965-1968 Working as a scientific assistant for Max Bense.
1968 He habilitates (second doctorate) in Stuttgart with the work “Logik und Logistik mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Kommunikationsforschung” [Logic and logistics with special consideration of communication research].
1969 University Lecturer in Stuttgart.
1969-1971 Lecturer for “Allgemeine Kommunikationstheorie” at the Institute for Environmental Planning at the School of Design Ulm.
1970 Maser publishes a strongly formalized mathematical model of information aesthetics: Numerische Ästhetik: neue mathematische Verfahren zur quantitativen Beschreibung.
1971-1978 Professor for “Systemforschung und Planungstheorie” [Systems Research and Planning Theory] at the faculty of “Experimentelle Umweltgestaltung” [Experimental Environmental Design] at the School of Design (later: University of the Arts) in Braunschweig.
1976-1978 Headmaster of the University of the Arts in Braunschweig.
Since 1978 Professor for design theory at the University Wuppertal.
1983 Allows for the first time in Germany the graduation and habilitation for designers in Design Theory at the Bergische University of Wuppertal.
1983-1987 Prorector for Studies, Teaching and Reform of studies at the Bergische University of Wuppertal.
1987-1991 Headmaster of the Bergische University of Wuppertal.
1991 Honorary doctoral degree from the Technical University Kosice (Slovakia).
Since 1993 Assistant Lecturer at the University of the Arts at Linz (Austria).
Since 2002 Guest lecturer at the Technical University Kosice.
Since 2004 Professor emeritus.
2005 Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Exhibitions organized
Illustrations
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