Random Machine

Random processes have tremendously creative, easily controllable, and constantly changing results.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart already understood how to utilise such processes in his work, for example, »Musikalisches Würfelspiel« [musical dice game] (KV 294d), which was constantly recreated by using dice. The random method creates a constantly transforming, though always uniformly distributed series of values. The most consistent users of this method in music are the American composer John Cage and the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis.

All users of »Random Machine« have one thing in common: producing randomness is very simple; the artistic challenge, however, is to develop artistic usages, because for human perception, randomness is only interesting in connection with clear rules. In the installation created by the ZKM | Institute for Music and Acoustic, different kinds of randomness and their application are presented. With the help of this instrument, even a musically inexperienced user can work with the phenomenon, and utilize randomness artistically.