Empty Words Part 1 - Reflections & Thoughts

Part  1

Soft Sounds – rattlings, hushing and drops, echoes – playful voice of a woman comes in – saying random words out loud. Somehow the sound is very pleasant although unintelligible. Start to notice the sharp contrast between vocals and consonants. Sometimes she stretches the words and they are more like noises rather than whole worlds. There’s emphasis on single letters. Some moments of no voice over – this pause feels like it is part of the sound piece, like a period of waiting. Sometimes it sounds like abstract poetry and sometimes it sounds like a story / fairytale being read to a child. At a certain point it becomes hectic and almost aggressive.

Part II – My impession is that the voice seems less playful and calmer. The general atmosphere is less hectic. Much less rattles and rustles – much less noise in general. Softer sounds – a more natural ambience.

Notes from the Cover:

“A mix of words, syllables, and letters obtained by subjecting the Journal of Henry David Thoreau to a series of I Ching chance operations.”

“What was interesting to me was making English less understandable. Because when it’s understandable, well, people control one another, and poetry disappears.”

“A transition from language to music. It’s bewildering at first, but it’s extremely pleasurable as time goes on. And that’s what I’m up to.”

John Cage in a radio interview on Empty Words, 1974

(to be continued...)

Feedback Unit 1 - thoughts

In this post I will be dissecting my feedback from Unit 1 and looking at how I can improve the suggested solutions.


You have developed a distinctive visual style in the way material is presented, although it is still not clear whether the two strands of your work should exist independently or as one. 

I wanted to have some kind of contrast between real life and visualisations, kind of like how we see in films such as Tree of Life and Enter the Void. I thought it might be interesting to see both strands working together in a randomised grid. I'm thinking of having the watercolours as a representation of sound, but this might change.

With regards to chance, there is a need for you to define and delineate exactly which processes will be driven by chance, and how the mechanical processes that drive the narrative(s) actually function. Beware of the illusion of randomness - it is not a panacea, but you have correctly identified the need for boundaries and "structured randomness" that actually delivers an unexpected outcome. It will be essential for you to design a sequencing method for your material, possibly using Markov models or some other weighted probability system. Otherwise there will be as many unsuccessful moments in your work as there are successful ones as far as the audience is concerned.


I am actually using two methods of chance; the natural process - where I had asked people to tell me a story from their life. This is of course dependent of who I choose and how they are feeling at the moment ( + other factors). Besides this there is the way that the randomisation happens on screen, and this happens by randomisation through code. I am currently discussing with my developer the amount of radomisation that will happen at one go. I will be posting this on the blog soon.

Paul Coldwell research paper feedback:
This intelligent essay sets out to explore the challenge to mainstream  film narrative  by the use of chance and a database aesthetic. The argument is well controlled throughout and extensively referenced. There is a real sense of working through a proposition and exploring its validity. The writing is clear and the examples used to carry the argument are well selected. These examples take in a broad approach to the subject, Buneul, Cage and Duchamp along with others but keep the argument focused.  There is potential here to be developed into a conference paper.

Sarah Scicluna's Robots

One of my students who is doing her thesis on mechanical Chance methods has produced some really interesting automatic drawings built by little 'robots' that she has constructed herself. The robots are essentially  moving machinery with an attached open pen that draws along the path that the robot decides to take. There are many features that I find extremely interesting in this project. The line itself is built from tiny little dots that immediately make it clear that the drawing has not been constructed by a human but by a machine. The lines themselves incorporate this very digital aesthetic, almost like a Processing sketch. This creates a cool contrast between the clearly traditional medium and the digital outline. 

Aside from the technical details however, I find that there could be an interesting argument about the authorship of the drawing. Of course the idea behind the process is Sarah's, but technically she is not doing any of the drawing herself. Is the robot the artist? Can one comment on the beauty of the composition of the piece when it was created by a mindlessly roaming robot? Can Sarah take credit for a drawing that took three hours to create, during which, she was baking cookies instead? The answer is of course, yes, because it was her concept all along, however the fact that the drawing looks so good in the end does get one wondering about the beauty of randomness and chance, and how the formal elements are still present in every sense even with such lack of control.

Reflective writing on Chat 13/03/2012 + other research & work

So this will be my next purchase:

One of my students who is doing her Thesis on Chance has brought it to college recently and it has some really good essays, so I had a look through and I will be buying it for a closer inspection.

I have also just received a copy of "Empty Words" a new CD release by the Wandelweisser group and kindly sent to me by one of the musicians themselves, Antoine Beuger (also interviewed in my research paper). I have written a detailed review of the pieces and will post it very soon on the blog.

I have had a look at Darren's and Jess' work. Here is what I sent to Darren (since internet at work was down):

"I just had the time to view Darren's linked blog posts. I'm really interested in this project because I'm working with Chance narrative myself so randomness plays a big role in my project. I really like that you are playing around with people's free will.. this should be interesting..

"Maybe people won’t get it, that’s ok. Well maybe it’s not ok actually because the interaction isn’t very fun! I’d like this to look appealing and I’d like the interaction to be inviting and a little fun, maybe so that if you don’t get all the free will and randomness stuff you at least have something nice to look at and interesting or fun to play with."

This is the exact same issue I have with my own project; trying to make something curious, intuitive but fun at the same time. In general I'm really looking forward to see how your project will turn out. I also like how it looks visually."

I had a look at Jess' videos and really liked what she is trying to communicate. I commented on the fact that even though she is communicating a sort of, negative message about how technology is hurting communication between people, the natural sounds and comfortable setting also make it look normal and less dramatic. Jess also had some videos with herself as the protagonist. She commented on how she wanted to put herself as one of the protagonists because she is also being affected by 'loneliness' of technology I suppose.