Bring the Noise

Introduction

Over the years working with different projects I have learned about and experimented with how to transfer methods from creative writing and worldmaking into my own work practice in the fields of art and design. In Postscript to the Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco writes on the generative logic he has adopted, a logic which both limits and expands creativity. The fundamental parameters of this logic guide what can and cannot be included in a fictional but plausible universe. In my own work and together with others I have chosen to focus on the generative itself of this logic; that is, it is not about parameters resulting in a consistent, watertight universe, but rather what can be generated from a large number of predetermined real and fictitious parameters. These parameters resonate through a mix of creative writing, physical artefacts, virtual objects, and modified game engines in a constant loop that results in novels, film, interaction designs, and art installations. By letting them evolve in these different settings they will separately host detailed and comprehensive perspectives, which incorporate surprising visual and technical proposals. “At the heart of creativity lie constraints: the very opposite of unpredictability. Constraints and unpredictability, familiarity and surprise, are somehow combined in original thinking.” Boden (1997)

Background

To be able to put the worked described in this article it has to be put into context. Have you ever wanted to build a world of you own? In 1999 we ended an art project called “from an indefinite point in the Cartesian space” that had generated 2000 low-res and 550 high-resolution models of buildings, interiors, objects and exteriors split up in over 50 scenes. Here was a unique possibility to do just that. Therefore, we extracted all of the models from the separated scenes and placed them on top of a superimposed infrastructure of sixteen different formula one tracks. We show how we used personas, role-playing (GURPS) and conceptual mathematical formulas to be able to explore and furniture the world. We named the virtual world “the city of Abadyl”, and made it to the initial venue for the project (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Camporia one of the city parts in Abadyl

Against the self-evident – a thorough indefiniteness, a defined obscurity A ”wild thinking” aiming to undermine the present and prevalent must nevertheless have a starting point, and a location in which to perform its laboratory work. Such a location was placed unintentionally on the map of the possible in the mid-seventies when Swedish Public Broadcasting, educating their listeners how to manage the new stereo technique, were establishing that: My voice will now be coming from the right my voice will now be coming from the left my voice will now be coming in between the loudspeakers my voice will now be coming from an indefinite location in the room.

This indefinite location in the room is something completely different than the outside location of the natural sciences, the point from which reality is measured and translated into objectivity. [This point too has proven itself absurd (even if strikingly efficient). Gödel, Heisenberg, Bohr etc] Then instead an indefiniteness within the room, and a voice imperatively calling forth its own elusive presence. Within the room but not clearly where, in many ways resembles the location of the potential in the prevalent, given. A floating possibility hidden in the persistently present. From the exhibition catalog Filedasy Galley Skanes konst 2003