Randomness in the Arts 2

From Maze

// // // // // // // // // // // //

Random Notes 29 November 2010

// From Chance, Edited by Margaret Iversen. MIT Press 2010

In art, 'chance' is discussed more than 'random'.

Chance can mean the free association works of the surrealists (automatism) or allowing things to happen (paint to drip). It can also be a more strict/technical definition of 'random':

We're interested in the later.

Marcel Duchamp and John Cage have been the most influential. Duchamp influenced Cage and Cage influenced many more across a range of fields.

Must discuss Duchamp's 3 Standard Stoppages and their use in the Large Glass.

Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia quoted in Chance Imagery by George Brecht [Iversen 38] " 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. "

Must discuss Cage and Zen Buddhism and his influence.

Cage in Experimental Music, 1958 [Iversen 51] " Those invoved 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 from sources as ancient as the Chinese Book of Changes, or as moderns as the tables of random numbers used also by physicists in research. " … " This means each performance of such a piece of music is unique, as interesting to its composer as to others listening. It is easy again to see the parallel with nature, for even with leaves of the same tree, no two are exactly alike. The parallel in art is the sculpture with moving parts, the mobile. "

"Art, Cage remarked, is not 'self expression but self alteration.'" [Iversen 92]

Fluxus was important in promoting the ideas further.

Random processes are essential to contemporary practice. Notable include Ellsworth Kelly, Gerhard Richter, Keith Tyson.

Gerhard Richter, Interview with Benjamin H.D. Buchlow [Iversen 159] " Above all, it's never a blind chance; its a chance that is always planned, but also always surprising. And I need it in order to carry on, in order to eradicate my mistakes, to destroy what I've worked out wrong, to introduce something different and disruptive. I'm often astonished to find how much better chance is than I am. "

Why "Chance" a theme in art?

• Response to science: Heisenberg uncertainty
• Response to science: Mutation in genetics
• Response to war: dada response to WWI, anti-rational
• Response to ?: Bypass human agency (self)

Free of social customs and other artificial restrictions on intellectual freedom.

Related notes:

• Find a historial random number tables used in the sciences as a figure
• Freud wrote about the mind and random numbers and bias: Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Chapter 12 http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Freud/Psycho/chap12.htm
• There seems to be some interesting discussion within statistics about generating non-biased random numbers

// // // // // // // // // // // // //