Fabricated with the technical support of

Peter Courtemanche and The Western Front.

A multisite specific engagement that can be created with numerous iterations depending on resources and intention.

We install a REG, - a random event generator - that uses quantum-indeterminate electronic noise in the form of low-amplitude voltage fluctuations to generate a constant stream of apparently random numbers. This REG is installed atop a standard white museum plinth.  It is wifi'd to a computer.

The resulting information is combed by a series of statistical benchmarks and translated to provide parameters for a further algorithm that edits a collection of video and sound clips.

The project builds on experiments conducted over the past 35 years at a number of laboratories, demonstrating that human consciousness  interacts with REGS apparently "causing" them to produce non-random patterns.

In effect the work proposes that the patrons of the Gallery will be assisting to generate collectively the vision of the art/document itself.

There are a large number of philosophical and aesthetics questions related to the question of randomness itself - so the piece is not solely concerned with the relationship of quantum tunneling effects and questions of consciousness.  Though the work is a kind of experiential tool for this, the intent is more to allow for an appreciation of the plenum of experience itself.

Here chance is to be considered in its most profound and informative modality: as the fact of anything at all.

Chance as nature and as that which makes art an approach of the infinite within the mortal, an immediacy of the unknown of the eternal now - the telling of the present.

The visual elements are in fluctuations, the current visuals are just one of a number of iterations and it is hoped that the piece  will see further iterations - site specific and portable.

What We Are Analyzing: the deviation from the norm over time of the REG (both towards more chaos and towards more conformity) and - the short-term deviation of incoming numbers.

Our REG is modeled on those used in the Global Consciousness Program

See: http://noosphere.princeton.edu 

Up to now, no general definition of randomness exists and discussions  still go on. The mostly desired feature of a true random generator, its "truth", bears the principal impossibility of ever describing such a generator completely and proving its randomness beyond any doubt.

This can only be done by recording its random sequence for an infinite time.