Looking Outward 06

“Collage with Squares Arranged according to the laws of Chance” By the DaDaist artist Jean (Hans) Arp, is a seemingly ordered yet disorganized collage composed of torn up pieces of colored paper on a grey background. For many DaDaist artists, found objects and chance encounters became an extremely important aspect of their creative process as they saw it as a way to break from from the traditional elements that defined artistic practices like intention, craft and control. This was the DaDaist approach to the ever increasing rational/ industrializing world that was developing around them. During the composition of the piece, Arp, alledgedly got frustrated by the original drawing he was working on and tore up the paper, dropping them on to the floor. This “accident”, a purely random encounter, in turn became the ultimate form of expression for the piece he created. Nothing, humanly composed or created will have as much of an accurate portrayal of expression, (an idea artists have been exploring for centuries) than the landing and fluttering down of the paper pieces. In the end I think what makes the concept of randomness powerful in computational and generative art is that it allows a certain degree of looseness. This looseness, formerly could not be found elsewhere in the art and design world. Everything was about intention and structure. Yet, randomness subverts those ideals and allows for the art to have a certain degree of agency away from the creator, breathing itself into life.