The discussion on randomness by Casey Reas was a lot more profound than I had expected. I’m used to talking about randomness from a purely mathematical perspective, such as the use of random/psuedorandom numbers in computer security, so hearing the more artistic interpretations was a large change of pace. One point that stood out to me was how you could interpret randomness as a deviation from order, creating a sort of chaotic rebellion against the system, and yet there are countless applications of randomness that converge towards their own sort of order. Similarly, there was also some debate mentioned about whether the use of computers was draining the human aspect from art or giving birth to a brand new medium, and how introducing randomness into a strictly rational machine could impact things.
Another aspect that underscored the entire talk was the careful balance of randomness and control. Going all-in on one side or the other will often lead to either meaningless or soulless results, but the real magic comes when order and chaos come together. I have already found the importance of placing bounds on random values from my own experimentation in p5.js, which imposes some degree of order. Another programmatic aspect that interested me came from a class I took previously, where we discussed noise functions. Specifically, we discussed how one noise function creates randomness, but a combination of noise functions can create a sort of ordered randomness that can be used for things like image textures.
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