Lanna Lang – Looking Outwards – 06

John Pound’s “RAN DUM LOOP” // 1999

This project revolves around a program that writes and draws random comics and cartoon art onscreen endlessly. The program randomly combines words, colors, shapes, figures, objects, and scenes into random text stories, cartoon drawings, and comic books. What I find interesting about this project is how Pound used the program not as a passive tool, but as an active agent in making creative decisions, and the extent how Pound used randomness to create his comics – he didn’t just use it minimally on just a few panels with nonsense word balloons, he used it to create text, scribbles, figures, stories, and page layouts.

What I saw through the one screenshot Pound shared about this project is that it uses basic shapes that resemble figures and shapes, but I would like to see this recreated with modern technology that can now scan already published comics, cartoons, and comic books, and then the program can randomly generate new comics and cartoons from those. What Pound did right was his intent behind using randomness; the point of creating something random is the idea of total nonsense and something beyond our conscious that challenges both the artist and the viewers to think abstractly.

Pound was inspired by previous programs that could make random sentences by combining basic words and other programs that could draw random figures and scenes. He then had the thought of combining these two different types of programs to make nonsense Sunday comics.