Okay so last semester I took Live Coding with Professor Aaron and this whole talk kind of took me back to that. Every time I would throw in a random() somewhere in Hydra or Tidal I always told myself I was letting go of control but honestly I was not I was just picking a range of outcomes I was fine with and calling it random. Watching Reas go from Duchamp literally dropping strings on the floor to writing actual random number generators kind of made that connection that it is the same move, just with more math. He is not really doing something new but doing the same “let something outside me cause this” thing people have been doing since like 1916.
The note that stuck with me the most was the “ordered grid with deviation of pixels” thing because that is literally what I was chasing in class without knowing how to say it. If the pattern is too locked in it just looks dead and boring, but if it is too random it just looks like noise and does not feel like anything. The good zone is somewhere in between where you can tell there is a rule happening but it still surprises you sometimes. That is basically what his 15-image series is doing: same rule every time but different result.
So when I think where the balance is between total randomness and total control, I do not really think it is a 50/50 thing. I think what I actually want is like a really good system with one small deviation in it on purpose. Full control means no surprises, which gets boring fast. Full randomness means no me in it anymore, it is just noise doing its own thing. The deviation in between is where it actually feels like art to me.