Randomness
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=== Randomness and Aesthetics Before Computing === | === Randomness and Aesthetics Before Computing === | ||
| − | Just as the different categories of indeterminacy in games are often reductively called "chance," so too in the visual arts, music, and other aesthetic practices is the word "chance" used instead of "randomness." In his 1956 chapbook Chance Imagery, the conceptual artist George Brecht described two distinct types of chance operations by which an artist might create a work: "one where the origin of images is unknown because it lies in deeper-than-conscious levels of the mind" and a 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. | + | Just as the different categories of indeterminacy in games are often reductively called "chance," so too in the visual arts, music, and other aesthetic practices is the word "chance" used instead of "randomness." In his 1956 chapbook ''Chance Imagery'', the conceptual artist George Brecht described two distinct types of chance operations by which an artist might create a work: "one where the origin of images is unknown because it lies in deeper-than-conscious levels of the mind" and a 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. |
The tension between these two chance operations is best captured in an anecdote from William Burroughs about a surrealist rally in the 1920s. Tristan Tzara suggested writing a poem "on the spot by pulling words out of a hat" and, as Burroughs tells it, "a riot ensued" and "wrecked the theater." André Breton, one of the leading surrealists "expelled" Tzara from the group, his purely mechanistic chance operation being an affront to the power and vagaries of the Freudian unconscious. Burroughs goes on to describe a similarly unpredictable mode of composition, the cut-up method, also proposed by Tzara in "To Make a Dadaist Poem" (1920). Take any poem, Burroughs implores his readers, and cut out each line, and rearrange the slices of the text, and "you will find that it says something and something quite definite" (90). Tzara himself suggests pulling the slices of text blindly from a bag, each random selection the next line of the new poem. The generative possibilities of this cut-up technique resemble the collage in art and the montage in film, and are far more mainstream than Tzara might have imagined in 1920 -- witness Thom Yorke writing the lyrics to Kid A in 1999 by pulling fragments of text out of a top hat. | The tension between these two chance operations is best captured in an anecdote from William Burroughs about a surrealist rally in the 1920s. Tristan Tzara suggested writing a poem "on the spot by pulling words out of a hat" and, as Burroughs tells it, "a riot ensued" and "wrecked the theater." André Breton, one of the leading surrealists "expelled" Tzara from the group, his purely mechanistic chance operation being an affront to the power and vagaries of the Freudian unconscious. Burroughs goes on to describe a similarly unpredictable mode of composition, the cut-up method, also proposed by Tzara in "To Make a Dadaist Poem" (1920). Take any poem, Burroughs implores his readers, and cut out each line, and rearrange the slices of the text, and "you will find that it says something and something quite definite" (90). Tzara himself suggests pulling the slices of text blindly from a bag, each random selection the next line of the new poem. The generative possibilities of this cut-up technique resemble the collage in art and the montage in film, and are far more mainstream than Tzara might have imagined in 1920 -- witness Thom Yorke writing the lyrics to Kid A in 1999 by pulling fragments of text out of a top hat. | ||
