Stochastic process, emergent form

Here is my favorite definition of stochastic (which is one of my favorite word-tools). The definition is from Caldwell, Robert (2001): Excellence in Singing: Multilevel Learning and Multilevel Teaching. Redmond, WA: Caldwell Publishing.

"A stochastic process has three basic parts:

• a random component -- a set of unpredictable elements
• a nonrandom component -- a mechanism, sometimes called a filter or bias, that selects from the random elements
• a unique result from the nonrandom filter interacting with the random elements

An example: Madelyn, one of our students, related her son's purchase of his first car -- a blue Subaru station wagon -- to stochastic processes. After her son bought the car, Madelyne spontaneously began noticing blue Subaru station wagons everywhere. They seemed to just pop out of the stream of cars whizzing by on the freeway. Notice the stochastic process: her attention (the filter, resulting from her son's purchase) sifted through the cars rolling down the freeway (the random elements) to produce the result (her distinguishing blue Subaru station wagons)."

I like the stochastic tool for a bunch of reasons. First, it captures a complex combination of two normally-separate concepts (to wit 'random' and 'nonrandom') without hyphenation! (This kind of brings me back full-circle to one of my firsts posts on this blog, back in January, called Hyphenated Epistemologies, which was kind of a rant about hyphenated-terms.)

I also like stochastic because I think it provides a useful tool to build further understanding of generative art as we've come to experience it this term. We have in some instances used 'rules' as nonrandom filters, and in other instances the nonrandom filtration has come from our own interests and personalities. Whether as rules, personality features, system parameters, or initial starting-points, nonrandom filtration has been sticky; it has been a consistent, perhaps even insistent, part of everything we have seen and done I would say.

Randomness has also been sticky (and sometimes even stinky :) I mean we had bags of rotting meat hanging from a bridge and in the hall, y'all! We also had a paint-ball mechanism, a tube and a quarter, a mechanical bug, a bunch of film stock hanging from a reel, a Freddy Kruger windchime-set, water, water, everywhere, a burger eating festival, etc. No matter what we did in terms of rules or other forms of nonrandomness, randomness made its presence known. It reared its ugly head. It headed its ugly rear. It hung around, it seeped in under the crack in the door, it wafted in the wind, it got our attention, oh yes it did.

But, even as compelling as the above two were and are, its the third piece of the stochastic trio that is my topic here. Caldwell describes it as the "unique result from the nonrandom filter interacting with the random elements."

So, what have all of our ruminations, actions, discussions, preoccupations, deconstructions, howlings-at-the-moon, etc. added up to? What has been the unique result? Has anything (in chaos-theory terms) emerged? Is there a strange attractor in the house? I think so.

It seems to me a unique result has, indeed, emerged. In this regard, the day that exploded like a seedpod in the bright hot sun was the one wherein we divided into groups (based on text, sound, video, and image), dispersed, worked (on our own and together), reconvened, and ultimately represented what we did (as a 'monsta-mashup' but also in synapses and other representational forms). By engaging in the stochastic process that was and is this class we arrived at a unique form of generative art that moved through distinct phases of 1) recapitulating the avant garde tradition, 2) exploring present variants of gen-art, and finally 3) producing a unique form resulting from the interactions of a particular nonrandom filter and particular random elements.

It also occurs to me that our filter re-constituted, re-discovered and possibly re-energized and updated the art of the production --a form or genre that is at the very heart of our beloved institution. Could this be possible? Have we discovered the ground beneath our feet?

Once upon a time, way back when, when I was an undergraduate at U.C. Santa Barbara, I recall standing out on the funky patio of my apartment building in the ultra-funky student ghetto called Isla Vista, at the end of the day, with a roomate and a friend of his, grilling chicken on the barbie and chatting. (I have a feeling you can relate to such scenes and conversations.)

Someone looked up, I guess, noticed the moon or something, and made a comment about outer space. I took no notice of this, but then my roomate started a rather long-ish ramble that boiled down to the idea that it had always surprised him to hear people talk about outer space as if it were 'out there' when in fact the earth itself was in outer space, boogying along in it at quite a rapid clip thank you very much, etc., and so forth. This comment was sticky for me (obviously since I am writing about it many years later, but also because it was I think deeply and beautifully insightful).

It strikes me as applicable to us in the present, for example. It's possible that by exploring the outer-edges of generative aesthetics we have re-discovered, re-defined, re-energized, and re-awakened dormant possibilities of great beauty within the production as an artform. Might we further distill our principles, hatch a new action, secure Watson Hall or some other campus space as a venue, and do something else? We could.

Certainly we could apply the principles we arrived at, the filtration system we constructed, to individually produced artworks in any medium, but part of my point here is that the strange attractor in our specific case, the unique fingerprint of generativity we created, reflects something like the structure of performance and/or the production. Dean has been calling attention to the performative aspects of our work for at least a few weeks.

In general, though, to again abstract from what we created for possible use in other contexts, the filter we constructed looks something like this: 1) Establish a starting point or initial condition by gathering disparate datapoints of a particular media-type or types (i.e., the monsta-mashup day was, arguably, keyed by gathering text-media datapoints simultaneously with gatherings of image, audio, and video datapoints. The final project is being keyed by audio-media datapoints in a kind of solo performance). 2) Gather parallel datasets that represent the other main media-types (if this was not done simultaneously in the start-up phase). 3) Assemble media-specific datasets into proto-products. 4) Combine proto-products into an overall production.

Any such production will of course reflect its process: it will include and/or frame further interaction of random elements and nonrandom filtration. (Hmm. Filtration. Maybe that's why the watery/liquid theme?) Okay, rambling now, time to ramble on.