Initally, I expected Casey Reas’ video to be more of a lecture-like talk about randomness and control, however, it was nice to see that his video consisted of a lot of examples as I prefer actually getting to watch, rather than just hearing about the ideas. My favorite part of the examples was when he showed himself coding this maze-like images at the end. This is kind of where I started to find an answer to the balance between total randomness and complete control. He is in control of the shapes being drawn, but it’s up to the computer which shape is being drawn and when. However, it still created beautiful, unique pieces everytime. I’m excited to incorporate randomness into my work by kind of allowing the computer to ‘make the decisions’ for me when it’s minor things like where each box goes or what color each box is, but controlling the limits of these decisions. I also think another way of intrepreting randomness and control can be about controlling your own narratives for your work rather than following what the current trends are or what the preferred styles are. You insert randomness by being unexpected and doing what you prefer rather than what people might expect, and you gain control because you control the narrative.
While watching the video, I was just doodling on my iPad, and I feel like it’s a nice example of randomness (with a bit of control). 