The Field Guide
The Field Guide is a curated index of the books, essays, articles, and resources that have shaped and inspired my work in generative design, digital aesthetics, and creative technology. Spanning philosophy, art history, design theory, computer science, and case studies from practice, it provides both a foundation and a horizon for exploring how systems, algorithms, and creativity intersect. Rather than being exhaustive, the guide highlights key sources that continue to inform critical thinking and experimental making within the evolving field of generative art and design. This list is being expanded constantly, so do come back regularly.
Foundational Theories & Philosophy
| Max Bense: Aesthetica, Stuttgart 1954. |
| Max Bense: Aesthetica: Einführung in die neue Aesthetic, Baden-Baden 1965. |
| Max Bense: Einführung in die informationstheoretische Ästhetik. Grundlegung und Anwendung in der Texttheorie, Hamburg 1969. |
| Max Bense: Projekte Generativer Ästhetik, in: rot, Nr. 19, 1965. |
| Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis: Die Mechanisierung des Weltbildes, Berlin/Heidelberg 1956. |
| Johann von Neumann: Probabilistic logics and the synthesis of reliable organisms from unreliable components, in: Claude Elwood Shannon, John McCarthy (Eds.): Automata Studies, Princeton 1956. |
| Johannes Hirschberger: Geschichte der Philosophie: Erster Band: Altertum und Mittelalter, Freiburg 1976. |
Generative & Algorithmic Art
| Asterios Agkathidis: Generative Design, London 2015. |
| Hartmut Bohnacker, Benedikt Groß, Julia Laub, Claudius Lazzeroni (Eds.): Generative Gestaltung: Entwerfen, Programmieren, Visualisieren, Mainz 2009. |
| Paul Brown (Ed.), Charlie Gere (Ed.), Nicholas Lambert (Ed.), Catherine Mason (Ed.): White heat cold logic: British computer art 1960–1980, London 2008. |
| Barbara Büscher (Ed.), Hans-Christian von Herrmann (Ed.), Christoph Hoffmann (Ed.): Ästhetik als Programm: Max Bense / Daten und Streuungen, Berlin 2004. |
| Philip Galanter: Generative art theory, in: Christiane Paul (Ed.): A Companion to Digital Art, Oxford 2016. |
| Stefan Herbrechter: Posthumanism and aesthetics, in: Charlie Gere, Francesca Franco (Eds.): The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of New Media Art – History and Theory, forthcoming. |
| Wolf Lieser: Digital Art: Neue Wege in der Kunst, Berlin 2010. |
| John Maeda: Creative Code, London 2004. |
| John Maeda: How to speak machine. Laws of design for a digital age, London 2019. |
| Marissa Memelink, Edwin van der Heide: Tracing autonomy & artistic significance: An alternative framework for analysing & comparing generative art, in: Mário Carvalhais, Marco Verdicchio, Luís Ribas, André Rangel (Eds.): Proceedings of the 11th Conference on computation, communication, aesthetics & x, Weimar 2023. |
| James Robert Parker: Generative art: Algorithms as artistic tool, Calgary 2020. |
| Casey Reas: Century, Berlin 2012. |
| Jasia Reichardt (Ed.): Cybernetic Serendipity. A walk around the exhibition, New York 2023. |
| Kolja Reichert: Kryptokunst, Berlin 2021. |
| Margit Rosen (Ed.): A Little-Known Story about a Movement, a Magazine, and the Computer’s Arrival in Art, Karlsruhe 2011. |
| Erwin Steller: Computer und Kunst. Programmierte Gestaltung: Wurzeln und Tendenzen neuer Ästhetiken, Mannheim 1992. |
| Hans-Michael Voigt: Evolutionäre Algorithmen & Generative Kunst. Ein Essay an einem Schnittpunkt von Informatik, Biowissenschaften und Kunst, Norderstedt 2016. |
| Georg Trogemann, Jochen Viehoff: Code@art. Eine elementare Einführung in die Programmierung als künstlerische Praktik, Wien 2005. |
Design & Communication Studies
| Christoph Bode, Rainer Dietrich: Future Narratives. Theory, Poetics, and Media-Historical Moment, Berlin/Boston 2013. |
| James Bridle: New Dark Age: Der Sieg der Technologie und das Ende der Zukunft, München 2020. |
| Karl Gerstner: Programme entwerfen: Statt Lösungen für Aufgaben Programme für Lösungen, Baden 2007. |
| Herbert Kapitzki: Programmiertes Gestalten: Grundlagen für das Visualisieren mit Zeichen, Karlsruhe 1980. |
| Robert Paulmann: double loop: Basiswissen Corporate Identity, Mainz 2005. |
| Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams, LUST: Form+Code. In Design, Art, and Architecture, New York 2010. |
| Alina Wheeler: Designing Brand Identity, Hoboken 2009. |
| Terry Wroblewski: Top-Down, Bottom-Up and Lateral: A Framework for Planning Communication, New York 2012. |
Technology, Data & AI
| Margaret A. Boden: The Creative Mind. Myths and Mechanisms, London 2004 (2nd ed.). |
| Jürgen Bortz, Nicola Döring: Forschungsmethoden und Evaluation, Berlin/Heidelberg 2006. |
| Charles Leiserson, Ronald Rivest, Clifford Stein: Algorithmen: Eine Einführung, München 2010. |
| Peter Sanders, Kurt Mehlhorn: Algorithms and Data Structures: The Basic Toolbox, Berlin/Heidelberg 2008. |
| Georg Michalik: Co-Creation: Die Kraft des gemeinsamen Denkens, Stuttgart 2020. |
| Catrin Misselhorn: Künstliche Intelligenz – das Ende der Kunst?, Ditzingen 2023. |
| Henning Wolf: Agile Softwareentwicklung: Werte, Konzepte und Methoden, Heidelberg 2010. |
Interdisciplinary & Related Fields
| Brian Boyd: On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction, Cambridge/London 2009. |
| Gerry Webster: Form and Transformation: Generative and Relational Principles in Biology, New York 2011. |
| Shunryu Suzuki: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Boulder 2011. |
Web & Research Sources (Technical)
| Robin Rombach et al.: High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models, arXiv preprint. |
| Aditya Ramesh et al.: Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents, OpenAI research paper. |
| Ian Goodfellow et al.: Generative Adversarial Networks, arXiv preprint. |
| Philip Galanter: What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory, online paper. |
| Processing Foundation: Processing, project site. |
| Adobe: Power incredible experiences with AI (Adobe Sensei), product page. |
| Google: Get more customers & generate leads with Google Ads, product page. |
| Netflix Research: Research areas: Driving insights from data, research page. |
| AI Multiple (Cem Dilmegani): When will singularity happen? 995 experts’ opinions on AGI, article. |
| The Futur: How To Charge For Design—Value Based Pricing, article. |
| Wikipedia: Geometrische Muster in der islamischen Kunst, encyclopedia entry. |
