I thought Casey’s talk on chance operation was really cool! I feel like when people talk about computers/ tech, they think about how the systems are built from am extremely rigid structure. When in reality, computer system (especially now with AI) have the capability to produce series of random results beyond what humans can think of and learn/ fix their own programming. Although there is structure in the way computer programs are given sets of parameters (position of the pivot points, color of the objects, movement of the shapes, etc.), the way which the program takes the information and returns a result may not always be what humans expect to happen.
Throughout Casey’s talk, I kept thinking if he could have imagined how far generative art has come. Since Casey’s talk 12 years ago, we have applications such as OpenAI and ChatGPT that have the capabilities to generate some artwork based off user prompts. User do not even need to have technical skills in order to tell the computer what to do; whereas compared to 12 years ago, users likely had to understand the computer manual and/or operating system in order to create some digital art.
With that said, my favorite part of his talk was his demonstration from 30:52 to 34:14 of the commodore 64. Whenever I see technology from the ’80s to early 2000 I am just absolutely fantastically with how far the digital and physical world of technology has come. The commodore 64 is a simple 8-bit home computer in the ’80s, and knowing something so simple was able to produce something complex humans consider as art, is the coolest thing to me. Now as programs and technology continue to advance, I wonder what the future would bring for not only the art community, but how else technology can influence our society.