aleatory

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Aleatoricism is the incorporation of chance into the process of creation, especially the creation of art or media. The word derives from the Latin word alea, the rolling of dice. It should not be confused with either improvisation or indeterminacy.^[1]

Literature

Charles Hartman discusses several methods of automatic generation of poetry in his book The Virtual Muse.^[2]

Art

Digital cameras, Photoshop, and computer generated random art programs along with wildly improvisational use of cutting edge materials and equipment have opened up a new world of possibilities for today's art students and emerging artists.^{[citation needed]} A small group of international artists have formed a group called MAMA or the Movement of Aleatoric Modern Artists, a worldwide collaboration of chance based artists who promote the principles and techniques of aleatoric methods in the execution of contemporary art in modern times.

Music

The term aleatory music was first coined by Werner Meyer-Eppler in 1955 to describe a course of sound events that is "determined in general but depends on chance in detail".^[3] When his article was published in English, the translator mistakenly rendered his German noun Aleatorik as an adjective, and so inadvertently created a new English word, "aleatoric".^[4] Pierre Boulez applied the term in this sense to his own pieces to distinguish them from the indeterminate music of John Cage.^[5] While Boulez purposefully composed his pieces to allow the performer certain liberties with regard to the sequencing and repetition of parts, Cage often composed through the application of chance operations without allowing the performer liberties. Another prolific composer of aleatory music was Karlheinz Stockhausen.^[6]

Aleatoric techniques are sometimes used in contemporary film music. Examples can be found in John Williams's scores as well as, for example, Mark Snow's music for X-Files: Fight the Future.^[7]

Film

In film-making, there are several avant-garde examples; one is Allison Knowles' computer poem "House of Dust",^[8]

Fred Camper's SN (1984, first screening 2002)^[9] uses coin-flipping for one section to determine which three of 16 possible reels to screen and what order they should go in (3360 permutations).

Barry Salt, now better known as a film scholar, is known to have made a film, Permutations, six reels long which takes the word aleatory quite literally by including a customized die for the projectionist to roll to determine the reel order (720 permutations).^[10]

Grant Patten utilizes an I Ching-inspired aleatory method to predict the date of his death in his short animation "The (Rough) Date of My Death" (2007).

See also

• Constrained writing
• Aleatory variable
• Avant-garde
• Biomusic
• Biomusicology
• Contemporary music
• New Age music
• Stochastic
• 20th century classical music
• Zoomusicology

References

1. ^ Sabine Feisst, "Losing Control: Indeterminacy and Improvisation in Music Since 1950", New Music Box (1 March 2002): § "Aleatory—Pierre Boulez".
2. ^ Hartman, Charles (1996), The Virtual Muse: Experiments in Computer Poetry, Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, ISBN 0-8195-2239-2  (see especially pp. 54–64.)
3. ^ Werner Meyer-Eppler. 1957. "Statistic and Psychologic Problems of Sound", translated by Alexander Goehr, Die Reihe 1 ("Electronic Music", 1957): 55–61; original German edition, 1955, as "Statistische und psychologische Klangprobleme", Die Reihe 1 ("Elektronische Musik", 1955): 22–28; the citation is on pp. 55 and 22, respectively.
4. ^ Arthur Jacobs, "Admonitoric Note", The Musical Times 107, no. 1479 (May 1966): 414.
5. ^ Sabine Feisst, "Losing Control: Indeterminacy and Improvisation in Music Since 1950", New Music Box (1 March 2002): § "Aleatory—Pierre Boulez".
6. ^ Sabine Feisst, "Losing Control: Indeterminacy and Improvisation in Music Since 1950", New Music Box (1 March 2002): § "Aleatory—Pierre Boulez".
7. ^ Fred Karlin and Rayburn Wright, On the Track: A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring, second edition (New York: Routledge, 2004): 430–36. ISBN 0-415-94135-0 (cloth); ISBN 0-415-94136-9 (pbk).
8. ^ Alison Knowles website
9. ^ Fred Camper, "SN, a film by Fred Camper", 2002.
10. ^ Anon., "Six Reels of Film to Be Shown in Any Order (1971)", BFI Film & TV Database.