Week 3: Jeremy - Design With Dice

“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
The image above is by the design group Tomato. Anyone familiar with their work will appreciate their seemingly random, yet perfectly composed, dynamic (almost in motion on the page) aesthetic. I would be lying if I said I haven’t tried to emulate their print and motion before, un-successfully. Then I heard this piece of music.

In 1964, Terry Riley composed a aleatoric musical piece called In C. He composed 53 short musical phrases, and suggested that the individuals in the orchestra play them arbitrarily, for a duration of 45 minutes to 90. ‘Aleatoric’ comes from the word Aleator, which means ‘dice player’. There in lies its beauty – the piece is so dynamic, so inspirational, because its a gamble – success is far from guaranteed. It is random, utterly dynamic, yet perfectly composed.

To bring this very abbreviated story full circle, I discovered that this piece changed the course of 20th century music massively influencing Philip Glass, Steve Reich, The Who (Bubba O’Riley, Won’t get fooled again), Charlie Mingus (Haitian Fight Song) and perhaps most interestingly to me, Tomato’s musical splinter Underworld. Make of that what you will.