Random generation in music/synthesis has always confused me a bit, because part of the point of music (at least, what Western music theory says), is that music wants to fit into a pattern that is pleasing for the human ear, and that’s how tunes get stuck in our head and how we end up attached to a certain song. Randomness doesn’t often lean in the acoustically pleasing direction, because our ears are so attuned to patterns and tones. Even someone with little musical training or ability can guess if a note is incorrect, and will often have a visceral reaction to a wrong note played in a familiar melody. I was intrigued by this tutorial because it showed how to use randomness along with other elements within the Ableton software (confining notes to a certain scale, randomizing the note value within a number of choices, etc) to create something that, however randomly generated, still sounds pleasing to our ear.

The painting, Shimmering Substance (1946), by Jackson Pollock combined his technique of utilizing random shapes and colors to create a comprehensive piece. I admired the way he was able to use this apparent lack of purpose to drive forth purpose in his work; a paradoxical paragon of art, if you will. Pollock was famed for the way he approached art, sparking forth a new movement of randomness in abstract art and this painting proves it all the more so. Although he did not utilize algorithms (as it was a traditional media piece), the way he approached the creation of the work could have been seen as similar to how a computer generates randomness: he utilized his whims to emulate the randomness that a computer can now generate. However, despite doing so, Pollock was able to use his artistic senses to balance out the randomness of the painting with a cohesion that allowed the painting to not only present a theme of shimmering but also look aesthetically pleasing.

^^ the aforementioned painting

By Ilia Urgen
Section B

This week, I came across a cool work of late-20th Century digital art. “e4708” was created in 1980 by Mark Wilson, one of the greatest pioneers in digital image making. Since then, his various computer generated art pieces have been widely exhibited across the world, but “e4708” remains his most popular work.

Wilson’s digital artwork is a combination of both a well-thought geometrical layout and aspects randomly generated by the computer’s algorithm. For instance, the rows/columns of the squares and circles are distinctively arranged to form a certain pattern. However, we notice that the background overlay, circle diameter/stroke width, and the square/circle fill are randomly generated.

This delegation of assigned and random elements create a structured, but very unique piece of art.

The piece I selected is the song/composition named Hausmusik by Harmonia. The piece is made up of seemingly random notes and sounds. We hear the randomness most in the variation of tempos in the piece. The ever changing tempo feels quite random and haphazard. I do not know anything about the process of writing the piece or if there was an algorithm used or not but it seems like there was an effort made to make the piece feel generative as opposed to highly planned and choreographed. I quite admire this as it in a way makes electronic music feel much more natural. Electronic music has a tendency to feel cold and often sharp and this piece in contrast feels sort of warm because of the way it randomly undulates. If I am speculating on the artist’s intention when creating this work, I assume that he intended for the piece to feel quite generative.