Tag Archives: random

Wooden Random Walks

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And my obsession with random processes continues. Using basswood strips, dice, glue and five colors of wood stain, I’m playing around with randomness again, but trying, this time, to create an aesthetic sensibility with the process. I’m hoping that the natural material and earth colors will soften the hard edges of the concept and create little lyrical creations. I don’t know, but I’m pretty happy with these so far:

They’re anywhere from 5″ to 14″ wide. The fewer segments, the shorter, of course.

To create these, I roll three dice: one eight-sided, one six-sided and one ten-sided. The eight-sided die tells me how long the segment is in inches, the six-sided die tells me the color of the segment, and the ten-sided die tells me if I should stop, if the die shows “0″. I cut out the series of segments, stain them the correct colors, then construct the random path by spinning the segment and using the resulting alignment. The three completely natural paths were done before I decided to stain the pieces.

I might change the die I use to choose the length, just for funsies, but lengths from 1″ to 8″ work well for these. The stains I’m using are Ebony, English Chestnut, Provincial, Early American and Colonial Maple, with #6 reserved for natural wood. The whole piece is then coated in tung oil for protection. The craftsmanship is a little off, but these are basically maquettes. There’s plenty of time for hardcore joinery as they progress.

And More Random Geometry

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If I’m posting the random overlaps, I might as well post the nine-ups of the random tangents, too:

Single random-sized circle placed randomly, with tangents constructed from the border vertices.

Two random-sized circles, placed randomly, with tangents from centers and outside tangents constructed.

Three random-sized circles placed randomly, plus tangents

And, finally, four random-sized circles placed randomly, with tangents.

More Random Geometry

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Sorry it’s been a while… been out of town, been busy, and been laid-off. So, now I should have plenty of time to work on more of these things in my copious free time. *sigh* Just for funsies, here’s a link to my resume and portfolio.

Anyway, I was playing with random geometric permutations again, and these were the only ones that actually looked interesting. Here are nine of them for your perusal:

In each of these patterns there are ten circles that are positioned randomly with a random amount of transparency applied. We shall see where this goes.

Random Tangents, Three Circles

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…perhaps demonstrative of my thinking processes or something. Anyway, for these images I used a series of nine numbers culled from random.org to set the diameter and x-y coordinates of three circles in Illustrator. I then drew the segments and rays emanating from the circle centers and various tangential points on their circumferences. I then did a simple transparency fill to create a series of overlapping gray areas. Thus, this result:

I will probably attempt to produce actual graphite drawings on paper using these starting principles, combining process and hand at the same time.

Training to Be Random: #1 and #2

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So while getting random numbers from random.org, I came across a fun little test that tells you how random you can be, as a human source of head or tails (H or T) flips. I tried it out on Friday, and this was my result:

hthhthttthththtthtththhththhthhthhthtthhththtthhtht
hhhhthhthtththtthththhthththhththththththtthhthth
number of h: 53   number of runs: 78   longest run: 4
probability of h given h: 0.27
probability of h given t:0.79
probability difference: -0.52

And today, this is what I got:

hthtthtthttthhhththhthhthttthtthhththhthhhhhhtthht
htthhtthththhthththtththttttthhthhththhthththhthht
number of h: 52   number of runs: 67   longest run: 6
probability of h given h: 0.37
probability of h given t:0.67
probability difference: -0.30

So… I’m getting a little better at being random, but not much.

Finally: Full Composite of the Harvard Random Walk

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I finally managed to piece together the random walk I did at the show at Adams House. I took about 80 pics, spaced about a full step apart in both directions. Alas, the flash made the centers of each frame brighter than the edges, but the shape of the walk is preserved. Here it is, sized for your browser, with the blue circle of “Proportional Moon” included.

Harvard Random Walk Composite

Around 60 images composited together to provde a bird's-eye view of the random walk I inscribed for "Indigenous Data". The blue circle is the delineation for "Proportional Moon".