"[Things that are] determined in general but depends on chance in details." — Werner Meyer-Eppler (1955)
"If poetry has long been the locus of the expression of subjectivity... this poem, composed of random constellations, questions the very possibility of an immediate expression of the author's interiority." – Hannah Higgins, et al on House of Dust
After having explored chance operations and indeterminacy, we'll make a subtle shift into thinking about randomness. While they initially seem to be synonyms, we'll later see a mathematical foundation for randomness (including ways to measure how much randomness is in a message). That foundation in numbers will guide us this week: instructions, dice, and other mechanical means for generating randomness. We'll make some more drawings using historical instructions, then create drawings with dice and other mechanical methods.
Above: Installation of Alison Knowles and James Tenney's computer-generated poem "House of Dust" in 1967
- Critique of last-week's projects
- Instruction drawings
- "Chaos game"
- Lunch break
- Dice drawings (and make our own dice)
- Homework
Critique
We'll start the day looking at your scores and the works you made from them.
Instruction drawings
Most of our engagements with randomness will be through systems, whether they be digital or, in this case, analog in the form of instructions. (Later we'll see that computer programming is really just a set of instructions for the computer.) We'll make some drawings in small groups following instructions, some historical and some created just for you.
You can find the slides with the drawing prompts in the Resources folder.
"Chaos Game"
Our next step involves instructions created by Michael Barnsley (with some mods from me) but with decisions you make about the system as well. Called the "Chaos Game," it's a set of rules to make a drawing by flipping a coin:
Start in the center of the page
Create two rules about moving from the current point to a new one
- 50/50 chance of either, decided by flipping a coin
- ex: move up by 12 and over by 2, move towards the center by 25%
Flip a coin, make the move and draw a dot
Repeat many times
For a more complex take, try assigning 6 different rules to the sides of a die!
Dice drawings (and make your own dice)
Building on the instruction drawings we've done so far, we'll spend the rest of today making drawings using dice (and other random inputs, if you want) to make drawings.
- On an index card or sheet of paper, write a set of instructions
- Then carry out those instructions on a separate sheet of paper
Don't rush the process: unlike the quick and experimental chance drawings we've done so far, think of this as a meditative process. Like the instruction drawings this morning, the more layers you have the more interesting the results.
Think about how you can create simple rules that make complex outputs, or how you might nest dice-based decisions into each other. We have lots of different kinds of dice as well, so feel free to experiment with various kinds and see how your rule-sets and drawings change. You can also use the blank wooden blocks to create your own custom dice! We also have some other mechanical number generators (yarrow sticks, bingo cage), or think about naturally-occurring systems you can use.
This week, your homework is to make something using random choices. The medium and approach are completely up to you.
Some possibilities, to get your brain going:
- A set of rules defining patterns of marks; roll the dice, make a mark, and repeat until the canvas is filled
- Flip a coin to choose which way to walk, gather materials along the way and photograph them (inspired by Braco Dimitrijevic's Casual Passer-By series)
- Use dice and a rule-set to determine how to point a camera and the edits you make from the resulting video
- Inspired by Jackson Mac Low's Stein 100: A Feather Likeness of the Justice Chair, create your own generating device (dice, etc) to pick from a word list and create poems from existing texts the you perform for us
This is just a starting point, though! Feel free to explore the idea of generating random choices in whatever media and approach you find interesting.
Next week, we'll be switching to the computer and will be working in Processing (a programming environment created for artists and designers) for the rest of the semester. If you have a laptop and want to use it, please feel free to bring it though you can also use the classroom computers too.
- The Dice Man, a novel by George Cockcroft (1971) who himself experimented with the idea of "living by the dice" (see also: Flippism)
- Alison Knowles and James Tenney's House of Dust, a computer-generated poem created in 1967 and later installed in a physical structure built specifically for the piece in 1970 (try this simulation by Zach Whalen)
- Andy Voda's Chance Chants, which uses random choices to cut up a text (including House of Dust as source material) as well as images and edits
- Eve Sussman's whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir, a film made of 3000 clips, 80 voice-overs, and 150 pieces of music that are edited together in real-time by an algorithmic system (more info on the piece)
- Stéphane Mallarmé's 30-year project The Book, published in 1957 after his death, and A Cast of Dice Never Can Annul Chance
- Raymond Queneau's Hundred Thousand Billion Poems
- Paintings of Kenneth Martin
- The epic terrain and history-generating game Dwarf Fortress
Lots more on dice:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreidel
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teetotum
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_dice
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miwin%27s_dice
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicherman_dice
- http://lamastex.org/lmse/galtons-dice
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musikalisches_W%C3%BCrfelspiel
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diceware