Click::RAND
2023-04-03 - 2023-04-30 | Square Edge Arts Centre – Main Gallery, 47 The Square, Palmerston North, Select a State:, 4410, New Zealand
Can random digit data be transformed and utilised as a sound installation that provides a
referential connection between a book and the electromechanical computer? What happens
when the text of A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates is ‘vocalised’ by an
electro-mechanical object? This book is the primary stimulus for the ideation of a nondeterministic sound installation, Click::RAND, the sonic articulation of a large set of true
random numbers produced by RAND Corporation. The work, an indeterminate sound sculpture
utilising relays as sound objects, is an audio-visual reinterpretation and representation of an
historical relationship between a book of random digits and electromechanical computing.
Click::RAND converts RAND Corporations book of random numbers into an audiovisual
series of binary sequences. The work presents these binary sequences as spatialised sound
patterns to complement the physical presence of the work. Click::RAND weaves together
quantified moments of binary sequences within a compositional framework based on Henri
Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis. This is comprised of a variety of rhythms that coexist and clash
categorised as eurhythmia, polyrhythmia and arrhythmia. Within this framework, each of
Click::RAND’s rhythmic forms are titled after Lefebvre’s characterisation of Rhythmanalysis.
Eurhythmia shows the smoother rhythmic but machine-like patterns of interwoven binary
sequences across multiple rows of relays. Polyrhythmia introduces the element of space into
the compositional form, both physically by the placement of sound blocks and into the work
as the presence and absence of sound. Arrhythmia’s tempo disturbs the work’s spatio-temoral
element through the presence and absence of sound as nonsynchronous binary sequences. As
such, Click::RAND explores the possibility of “embodying the notation of presence and
absence” as a method to expose the patterns of state transitions of binary sequences as a series
of rhythmic forms.
