odd number

I’ve just signed up for a new course, Applications in Probability.

The word “probability” has a contrary provenance. Wikipedia says:

According to Richard Jeffrey, “Before the middle of the seventeenth century, the term ‘probable’ (Latin probabilis) meant approvable, and was applied in that sense, univocally, to opinion and to action. A probable action or opinion was one such as sensible people would undertake or hold, in the circumstances.

The most obvious example of chance as the subject of a piece of work is Duchamp’s Three Standard Stoppages: three one metre long threads are dropped onto pieces of cloth, which are then chopped up according to where the threads have fallen. Duchamp wrote the instructions of the work’s making on the side of the box – the process of its creation was as important as the resulting artefact. Maybe it’s not a readymade, but an unreadymade.

Any work that incorporates real-world processes is invoking chance – but not necessarily in the plain sense of randomness, or as a subject in itself. If there is something as obvious as the roll of dice, then it’s about unlocking and making visible the natural processes which are the subject.

Process art employs natural forces, and its practitioners seem to have a passing interest in chance and serendipity.

Generative art uses randomness, often as a seed for the algorithmic process, either at the start or within each iteration. But I don’t think chance is (normally) its subject – rather, it’s a conveniently available unspecified event to be exploited.

Chance sits at a particular meeting point between knowledge and ignorance. We can say something quantitive about an outcome, especially over a long period of time if it involves repeating the same event. If it’s equally likely outcomes, then this quantity can be worked out by counting (the theoretical approach). Or we can establish the probability of outcomes from empirical observation, and accumulation of data.

But if we need probability, then we either can’t have knowledge of all the factors contributing to an outcome, or there are simply too many factors to calculate effectively. Probability and chance are admissions of failure – we don’t know what’s going to happen, but we can say how many times something might happen as opposed to not.

Whatever, it’s apparent that predictions and their relationship to outcomes are at the heart of human interests, from gambling to the enlivening possibility of failure in a performance. I’m unsure of its validity as an area of artistic exploration though. Maybe it’s simply a tool to be employed.