Chance Operations

 

In the book Analogia, George Dyson uses the commercial airline industry as an analogy for how cybernetics work: You develop a simple system with simple rules and then let it run itself. There is no control room per se, but you can set one up. For example, in a music session I would have 3 to 4 channels devoted to constantly running systems based on algorithms, and then pull up the faders at random moments to see what's there. It's sort of like opening the window to let in the ambient sound with a live mic. But in my experience, bringing in random elements is rarely useful. Randomness has a mind of its own, and it is running the show. It's the man behind the curtain, or God if you will.

"Airlines call this yield management and develop sophisticated algorithms for changing the price of tickets according to available seats in real time....Isn't there a control room somewhere with someone at the controls? Maybe not. For example, you build a system to map highway traffic in real time, by giving cars access to the map in exchange for reporting your own location at speed. The result is a decentralized control system. Nowhere is there any central controlling model based on the real-time reports, a real-time map, and a simple algorithm that chooses the shortest path in time between the two points. The complexity is not in the algorithm, it's in the traffic itself." (p. 250)

Thoughts On John Cage's Chance Operations:

I'm of two minds on letting systems drive the aesthetics. Every piece should stand on its own in some way without the rules always having to be consulted. For me it's important that I can retrace my steps and show or tell someone how I made it. It's like knowing the recipe and showing someone how to do it, or simply giving them the recipe.