Before watching this weeks lecture, I thought randomness meant that something was completely uncontrolled and involved no human interactive but this reading changed my mind because I realized that randomness can actually be controlled through decisions and rules. I found it interesting how randomness can be used to create art and how adding a small amount of noise to certain rules and code can make it look better. I especially liked the example of Reas and his wife incorporating randomness into clothing because it showed me that interactive media and random art can be applied in everyday life, even to something as simple as clothing. This made me realize that randomness is used much more widely than I originally thought. It also made me think about my own work because I usually create things that are more repetitive and less random however I could add some randomness to my p5.js work to make the outcome more unique while still keeping the overall structure of my design.Also a key thing is that randomness can be mixed into different subjects, such as biology and embedded into daily life I didn’t expect it to be a option, and it was something that surprised me as I never taught of this.
I think the optimum balance between complete control and total randomness is somewhere is a mix and depends on the situation. I think having a purpose and knowing what want the artwork to look like, and then deciding where randomness could improve it. I think too much randomness could make an artwork look messy or take away from its purpose, while a small amount can make it more interesting and not overstimulating. However in the process 18 example the complete randomness did make the overall art work look good so the extent of randomness is depends on the case. I also think testing is important because you can change the amount of randomness and see what works best instead of trying to control every detail. This connects to the work we did this week because for example I repeated shapes as I was were creating using rules and loops, but adding random changes to the colors, sizes, or positions could create more variation. I don’t think complete control is given to the person creating it as the computer has a certain degree of control and thats what creates the art and randomness. Overall, the talk showed me that using randomness does not mean giving up control. Instead, the artist can control how much randomness is within the art and use it as another creative decision.