First reaction: oh bog, not the 'aleatory' thread again. Iwe have 110k on
disk culled from the last time this came up on Poetics. Should iwe post it
here? Anyone want it back-channel as an attachment?
Second: 'Personally' and 'theoretically' iwe've never had any problem with
the 'random' (please note nice, hip use of the term in Douglas Coupland's
_microserfs_ c.= 'off the wall', as in "Susan's fashion sense was so
*random*."). Many thanks to Randolph for brief, eloquent, inspiring
mathemati/physical deconstruction. Nor do iwe have trouble reconciling the
composed with the coincidental. Is there any requirement that they should
be reconciled?
Third: Iwe heard an excellent performance at the Slade yesterday by Yve
Lomax ("artist and writer") which concerned, amongst other things,
inclination and declination, (en)tropical turnings in and out of chaos as a
way of meaning creation. It was a sort of post-structural mythologizing of
Lucretius. (Yes, it *was* poetry, by someone who would not call herself
poet -- why not, iwe wondered?)
This made muse think of moury favourite quote from Lucretius:
"But the fact that the mind itself has no internal necessity to determine
its every act and compel it to suffer in helpless passivity -- this is due
to the slight swerve of the atoms at no determinate time or place." (Book 2)
Gloss: There would be no thin(g)king without the random.
>Recognising on the list all kinds of other approaches to this part of
>"composition", I thought I'd fling it into the pond to see which dogs
>jumped after it...
Woof, woof.
Noboby knew we were dogs -- until now.
Bests,
John & Harry
PP: Iwe are posting a press-release from the wr-eye-tings list on a recent
installation by Kenneth Goldsmith, where he recorded and printed out every
word he spoke for a week, then installed it in a NYC gallery:
Random?
Arbitrary?
Iwe'd be interested in list-persons distinctions between these two:
'aleatory' & 'arbitrary'.
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