I think randomness plays two roles. One is to embed the messages of an artist against the structured society they lived in. The other is to ignite our imagination through unexpected results. In terms of the first one, there were many artworks introduced by the speaker where artists incorporated randomness to imply the message that they wanted to use their own imagination within the structured society. Thus, in those earlier times, randomness represented people’s desire to bring chaos into the society they lived in to free themselves from structure so they could live in their own world. I guess that was their way of manipulating their own imagination to find out who they are. I really resonated with the second role of randomness, which is to allow the audience to use their own imagination to interpret an artwork. There was a project I learned about in the course I took in the fall semester in 2024 called “immersive experiences”, where the producer of the artwork brought a group of random people together in the same place without giving any instructions, and simply let them play with what they had in the room. I felt this was very similar to the concept of randomness the speaker described, in the sense that randomness can lead to unexpected events that we can then interpret using our imagination. Unlike structured artwork, there is no right or wrong way to interpret it. Therefore, you have total freedom in how you interpret and critique a piece of artwork. You can either agree with it or disagree with it. However, with structured artwork, there is usually only one way to interpret it from a single perspective.
I also found the example shown in the video very intriguing, where the speaker demonstrated different codes to show the effects of having randomness by comparing structured codes. The code with the functionality of generating random numbers allowed us to use our imagination to think, for example, that generated things might be a maze or to enjoy tracing where a particular path might go. However, the code without that functionality only generated one dedicated path, which is expected from the process of coding. In this sense, incorporating randomness into artwork adds an intriguing aspect and allows us to freely use our imagination to analyze, interpret, and critique it. I think that is the beauty of incorporating randomness into artwork. But I also agree with the author’s point that it is about achieving a balance between randomness and order. For instance, in one of his artworks where things emerged from the top, bottom, and sides, he defined conditions where, if particles collided with each other, they would deviate away. Those general functions that create interesting animations are absolutely necessary, and humans should be in charge of defining them. However, the way things appear can be controlled by randomness, because if there is only one way for things to emerge, then the result is always expected. I think the result should always be unexpected so that viewers can use their own imagination to interpret the art. At the same time, artists should define some core functionalities or general rules of interaction so that the structure itself has meaning. My conclusion is that a fusion of structure and randomness gives meaning to artwork. If one of them is lacking, the result is either predictable or too chaotic to the point where the meaning is not interpretable. Having a strong balance between structure and randomness allows us to freely use our imagination to explore the meanings of artwork.