Casey Reas’ Eyeo Reading Reflection – Week #2

REFLECTION

Casey Reas’ talk on randomness & chance revolutionized my own understanding of how art is composed, and what defines it as art. Before watching this video, I held a rigid view that randomness and art were mutually exclusive, believing that every artistic decision was deliberate, therefore, randomness is not possible. However, Reas’ discussion used the example of Dada’s artwork — which made me reflect on his time period. I am familiar with Dada, and his works. Like Reas mentioned, Dada shows his approach was to challenge the rational, as a reflection of the collapsing societies and turmoil post World War I.

He forges a link to art and the use of technology, by discussing the renowned John Cage. He was revolutionary in the field of Music Technology, as he was one of the first producers to use technology to compose music – utilizing the element of randomness  to determine pitch and length. As someone that has heard of John Cage, and is familiar with parts of his work,  I was surprised to see him featured here, as I had not considered his Book Of Music as ‘art’ — I had seen it as a strict use of splicing, impressing his audience of the time with the tools he was able to fine tune and take advantage of. Therefore, this got me to think, what kind of music did I consider as art? And what kind of technology makes art?

I also found Reas’ discussion on his concert compositions quite profound. He reveals how he found inspiration from previous pieces to make his composition, yet included an algorithm to sort of generate a randomness, limited by his requirement of the shapes being 90 degrees. This discussion has led me to question my own methods on inculcating this philosophy of randomness when I am making artworks and projects, and how I can draw a so-called ‘balance’ between the idea of randomness and other deliberate pieces.