Dream image project: App for randomness

Finally, I step into a second level with my dream-image-random-test: I now have an app which can create an endless amount of images just by clicking spacebar.

surrealismegenerator-app

My colleague Stig, who helped me last time setting up a code in Processing based on rules for compositions, and uses of elements from the catalogue of my, now created an app with only two functions: Next and save.
In order to respect the opportunities for randomness to appear, the app is made as simple as possible, less user control. While Stig was working on the app, he had ideas of making sliders for different purposes to control the output, but he realised that it was in contradiction to the fundamental idea of chance. Therefore he focused on simplicity in function and with few prefixed rules like; anger point at the bottom of every tree, a neck fixed on “body”, respect area around some objects.
The elements are sometimes arranged in very weird constellations like in the top of each other, in a way, I would never do.
I let the computer/app take part of the control inside an established system (the app). The amount number of images I can create, just by clicking spacebar, gives me a feeling of endless randomness. I can select and save images I find good and interesting. Then I can analyse the chosen output, making new rules based on my aesthetic, and so on.

 

Marcel Duchamp about chance

According to my research, I start getting interested in Marcel Duchamp. It seems like he appears in every text, video sequence or exhibition I am looking at. I understand that he is an essential person in the history of art and the art world today.
In this BBC interview from 1968, he comes around topics like retinal painting, cubism, The Large Glass (artwork he made from 1915-23), chance, readymade, mass production, pop art and up art and chock in the light of his working method.
The interviewer asks him:
Chance in art was something Dada set out to really explode to use…
…What do you think now the element of chance in the artwork of art is, having tried to control and device chance to serve your ends, do you think it is something subconsciously the artist project into the work?
Duchamp:
Yes because chance are maybe unknown to us in other words, we don’t know the results of chance because we haven’t got enough brains for that. The divine brain, for example, could perfectly say there is no chance, I know what is going to happen…We are not able to detect what chance will bring. So it is a kind of alteration for chance or consideration of chance, almost as a religious element.
So it is very interesting to have introduced to put it as a service of art production.