Randomness
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=== Randomness and Aesthetics Before Computing === | === Randomness and Aesthetics Before Computing === | ||
| − | While randomness has played a significant role in the visual arts, music, and other areas of aesthetic practice, it often goes by the name "chance" in these contexts. What is meant by "chance" is a bit more general than typical understandings of "randomness," covering a wider range of work. In his 1956 chapbook ''Chance Imagery,'' the conceptual artist George Brecht described two distinct 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. | + | While randomness has played a significant role in the visual arts, music, and other areas of aesthetic practice, it often goes by the name "chance" in these contexts. What is meant by "chance" is a bit more general than typical understandings of "randomness," covering a wider range of work. In his 1956 chapbook ''Chance Imagery,'' the conceptual artist George Brecht described two distinct 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 is closer to the typical concept of randomness in computing; it describes the process of the artists most directly connected to 10 PRINT and its random process. Of course, the two senses are worth noting because it difficult to pull on one of the two senses of "chance" without the other one -- the unconscious, in this case - at least feeling a tug. |
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. | ||
