In Casey Reas’s talk, what interested me most was the idea that randomness can be a deliberate creative tool, I have never thought of it in that way. I like that randomness can surprise me and generate results I wouldn’t have drawn by hand, but I also feel a strong need to keep a clear structure that reflects my own decisions. For example, recently I am very drawn to space and astronomy, so I imagine an immersive, interactive “space” piece – something a bit like teamLab’s environments (which very much inspired me when I attended one in Abu Dhabi), where I design the overall universe, but let random values control details as the exact placement and number of stars at any moment. In that sense, I realized what controlled randomness is; it opened up a new way of thinking about how I can build systems that feel alive while still being rooted in my own vision.
At the same time, I don’t fully agree with how positively Reas seems to talk about randomness, as if more randomness is always good. From my perspective, too much randomness can quickly become visual noise, and I am not comfortable handing over that much authorship to code or AI tools. My personal “sweet spot” is closer to 70% control and 30% randomness: I want the system to add variation and surprise, but I still want to feel that most of the choices especially the concept and mood come from me. This makes me skeptical of the idea that designing the system alone automatically solves all questions of authorship, but his examples still show useful ways to set rules and then allow variation inside them. His talk makes me more open to try out this new techniques for me and experiment with random elements in my own sketches.