Randomness
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=== Randomness and Aesthetics Before Computing === | === Randomness and Aesthetics Before Computing === | ||
| − | Within the visual arts, the word chance is used more than our term random. The meaning of chance in this context is more general and covers a wider range of work. In his text Chance Imagery, the conceptual artist George Brecht clarifies between two types of chance operations, “one where the origin of images is unknown because it lies in deeper-than-conscious levels of the mind, and the second where images derive from mechanical processes not under the artist’s control.” The first definition describes the work of the surrealists and abstract expressionists who allow subconscious processes to dictate the work. The second definition correlates to how we define randomness; it describes the work of the artists most relevant to our interest in 10 Print. | + | Within the visual arts, the word chance is used more than our term random. The meaning of chance in this context is more general and covers a wider range of work. In his text Chance Imagery, the conceptual artist George Brecht clarifies between two types of chance operations, “one where the origin of images is unknown because it lies in deeper-than-conscious levels of the mind, and the second where images derive from mechanical processes not under the artist’s control.” The first definition describes the work of the surrealists and abstract expressionists who allow subconscious processes to dictate the work. The second definition correlates to how we define randomness; it describes the work of the artists most relevant to our interest in 10 PRINT. |
In 1913, the French artist Marcel Duchamp made a strong statement with Three Standard Stoppages. He dropped three meter-long pieces of string from the height of one meter and let gravity and wind dictate the paths of the twisting string downward. He then adhered the string and recorded the shape by cutting it out of wood to make a new measurement. This act challenged the meter as a standard measurement and allowed Duchamp to construct his own standards as a parody of rational science and to undermine the authority of the meter. He wrote about the piece in 1914 that the falling thread distorts “itself as it pleases” and the “3 standard stoppages are the meter diminished.” On his use of randomness, Duchamp said, “Pure chance interested me as a way of going agains logical reality.” Duchamp was active within the Dada, and arts movement that reacted to the horrors of World War I with satire and absurdity. In the words of the Dada musician Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia, “Dada wished to destroy the reasonable frauds of men and recover the natural, unreasonable order. Dada wished to replace the logical nonsense of the men of today with an illogical nonsense.” To Jean (Hans) Arp, a Dada artist, individual authorship was synonymous to authoritarianism and random elements were used to liberate the work. | In 1913, the French artist Marcel Duchamp made a strong statement with Three Standard Stoppages. He dropped three meter-long pieces of string from the height of one meter and let gravity and wind dictate the paths of the twisting string downward. He then adhered the string and recorded the shape by cutting it out of wood to make a new measurement. This act challenged the meter as a standard measurement and allowed Duchamp to construct his own standards as a parody of rational science and to undermine the authority of the meter. He wrote about the piece in 1914 that the falling thread distorts “itself as it pleases” and the “3 standard stoppages are the meter diminished.” On his use of randomness, Duchamp said, “Pure chance interested me as a way of going agains logical reality.” Duchamp was active within the Dada, and arts movement that reacted to the horrors of World War I with satire and absurdity. In the words of the Dada musician Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia, “Dada wished to destroy the reasonable frauds of men and recover the natural, unreasonable order. Dada wished to replace the logical nonsense of the men of today with an illogical nonsense.” To Jean (Hans) Arp, a Dada artist, individual authorship was synonymous to authoritarianism and random elements were used to liberate the work. | ||
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* Parallel Audible Example | * Parallel Audible Example | ||
| − | In addition to the visual arts, randomness has a place in music as well. To musicians such as Douglas Cope, who make generative music, randomness serves as an accompaniment to the structure of a piece. To keep things simple, we have constructed an audible clone of 10Print which interested readers may like to type in and try out. It takes many more lines than 10Print because the C64 was never endowed with specific BASIC commands for making sound and graphics. The heart of this program is lines 35-75. RND(1) is used to select whether a C or F# note is played. After entering the program and typing RUN, the listener will hear a sequence of evenly-spaced alternating notes, similar to how 10Print displays evenly-spaced alternating / and \ symbols. Of course, the stream of audio does not have a "wrap" function like the terminal does, so there is no means for a "maze" to appear. Readers can judge for themselves, however, what kind of equivalences there are between the visual and audible version of the program. | + | In addition to the visual arts, randomness has a place in music as well. To musicians such as Douglas Cope, who make generative music, randomness serves as an accompaniment to the structure of a piece. To keep things simple, we have constructed an audible clone of 10Print which interested readers may like to type in and try out. It takes many more lines than 10 PRINT because the C64 was never endowed with specific BASIC commands for making sound and graphics. The heart of this program is lines 35-75. RND(1) is used to select whether a C or F# note is played. After entering the program and typing RUN, the listener will hear a sequence of evenly-spaced alternating notes, similar to how 10 PRINT displays evenly-spaced alternating / and \ symbols. Of course, the stream of audio does not have a "wrap" function like the terminal does, so there is no means for a "maze" to appear. Readers can judge for themselves, however, what kind of equivalences there are between the visual and audible version of the program. |
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| − | Continuing on with the musical interpretations, it is important to mention John Cage. Within the twentieth century, John Cage is most responsible for promoting random processes within the arts. Cage was strongly influenced by Duchamp. From Cage's point of view, random elements can remove individual bias from creation; they may be used to go beyond the limitations of the taste and bias through “chance operations”. In additional to his work as a composer following these ideas, Cage influenced generations of artists through his writing, lectures, and classes. In this text “Experimental Music”, Cage wrote, “Those involved with the composition of experimental music find ways and means to remove themselves from the activities of the sounds they make. Some employ chance operations, derived form sources as ancient as the Chinese Books of Changes, or as modern as the tables of random numbers used also by physicists in research.” [Cage 66, p. 10] [Note: Earle Brown used the following random sampling number tables: "M.G. Kendall and B. Babington Smith, A Table of Random Sampling Numbers. Tracts for Computers no. 24. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1939)."] Cage's style of random composition was to create a system of parameters, then leave the results to circumstance. Cage explained, “This means that each performance of such a piece of music is unique, as interesting to its composer as to others listening. It is easy to see again the parallel with nature, for even with leaves of the same tree, no two are exactly alike.” [Cage 66, p. 11] Random components are used to transform a single composition into a space of potential compositions. Over the decades, Cage used an array of techniques to insert unexpected elements into this compositions. He defines the range of techniques used by himself and his contemporaries in the 1958 lectures “Composition as Process”. There are generally two methods for utilizing random values – using them at the time of composition to define the work, or to allow for variation while the work is performed. This second category of is most similar to 10 Print, where the random decisions are made during the programs execution, or to say it a different way, while the instructions are performed by the C64 operating system. | + | Continuing on with the musical interpretations, it is important to mention John Cage. Within the twentieth century, John Cage is most responsible for promoting random processes within the arts. Cage was strongly influenced by Duchamp. From Cage's point of view, random elements can remove individual bias from creation; they may be used to go beyond the limitations of the taste and bias through “chance operations”. In additional to his work as a composer following these ideas, Cage influenced generations of artists through his writing, lectures, and classes. In this text “Experimental Music”, Cage wrote, “Those involved with the composition of experimental music find ways and means to remove themselves from the activities of the sounds they make. Some employ chance operations, derived form sources as ancient as the Chinese Books of Changes, or as modern as the tables of random numbers used also by physicists in research.” [Cage 66, p. 10] [Note: Earle Brown used the following random sampling number tables: "M.G. Kendall and B. Babington Smith, A Table of Random Sampling Numbers. Tracts for Computers no. 24. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1939)."] Cage's style of random composition was to create a system of parameters, then leave the results to circumstance. Cage explained, “This means that each performance of such a piece of music is unique, as interesting to its composer as to others listening. It is easy to see again the parallel with nature, for even with leaves of the same tree, no two are exactly alike.” [Cage 66, p. 11] Random components are used to transform a single composition into a space of potential compositions. Over the decades, Cage used an array of techniques to insert unexpected elements into this compositions. He defines the range of techniques used by himself and his contemporaries in the 1958 lectures “Composition as Process”. There are generally two methods for utilizing random values – using them at the time of composition to define the work, or to allow for variation while the work is performed. This second category of is most similar to 10 Print, where the random decisions are made during the programs execution, or to say it a different way, while the instructions are performed by the C64 operating system. |
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| − | <del>In Cage's Music of Changes (1951) and Earle Brown's Indices (1954/57) random values are used to create a fixed composition. Cage used the I-Ching (Book of Changes) to determine among other elements. He flipped three coins six times to determine the hexagram ??? [Note: I stopped writing this section for fear of too much irrelevant detail.]</del> | ||
Within two-dimensional visual art, mechanical random processes were explored for the reasons championed by Cage. The eminent contemporary painter Gerhard Richter provides a simple answer to why this is beneficial, “I'm often astonished to find how much better chance is than I am.” There's precedent for chance used within visual works dating back to collage works by Jean (Hans) Arp from 1916, but the two most relevant early works to 10 Print are the Spectrum of Colors Arranged by Chance collage series (1951) by Ellsworth Kelly and Random Distribution of 40,000 Squares Using the Odd and Even Numbers of a Telephone Directory (1961) by François Morellet. Both of these works start with an even grid and proceed to fill the grid carefully with elements based on the algorithms developed by the artists. Kelly used squares of colored paper and placed according to a system he designed. He assigned a number to each color and then plotted the numbers on the grid according the a pseudo-mathematical system. [Malone 2009 p. 133] Morellet employed the more strict system by reading a series of numbers from the telephone book. He made a grid of 200 vertical and horizontal lines and if the assigned number was even, he painted the square blue; if the number was odd, he painted the square red. In both systems and in 10 Print, the structure of the grid makes it possible to focus on the variability created through the random operations. | Within two-dimensional visual art, mechanical random processes were explored for the reasons championed by Cage. The eminent contemporary painter Gerhard Richter provides a simple answer to why this is beneficial, “I'm often astonished to find how much better chance is than I am.” There's precedent for chance used within visual works dating back to collage works by Jean (Hans) Arp from 1916, but the two most relevant early works to 10 Print are the Spectrum of Colors Arranged by Chance collage series (1951) by Ellsworth Kelly and Random Distribution of 40,000 Squares Using the Odd and Even Numbers of a Telephone Directory (1961) by François Morellet. Both of these works start with an even grid and proceed to fill the grid carefully with elements based on the algorithms developed by the artists. Kelly used squares of colored paper and placed according to a system he designed. He assigned a number to each color and then plotted the numbers on the grid according the a pseudo-mathematical system. [Malone 2009 p. 133] Morellet employed the more strict system by reading a series of numbers from the telephone book. He made a grid of 200 vertical and horizontal lines and if the assigned number was even, he painted the square blue; if the number was odd, he painted the square red. In both systems and in 10 Print, the structure of the grid makes it possible to focus on the variability created through the random operations. | ||
