Archive for November, 2009

Games of Chance

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on November 28, 2009 by Chris

After spending more time and money than I have—designing various chance cards,  inserting bearings into laser cut plastic discs and cutting wood—I built a biased wheel. It has a slight wobble, which causes it to stop in or around the same position every time. No good for generating random results.

After spending a day pulling my hair out and getting back to the drawing board, I found a great article  about Murphy, a Random Mechanical Cascade Machine, built in the late 1970′s to test theories of chance and randomness (and the difficulties that man has in playing along).

Read the article here

Home and Job Mathematics

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , on November 24, 2009 by Chris

I happened upon this book in the laundry room of our building, where there is a public book shelf that you can take and leave books.

It’s actually quite a gem (hilarious outdated concepts used in it aside) its in great condition for being printed in the 1940′s, and it’s beautifully designed and printed with hand drawn charts and graphs.

And above all, I’ve always felt that this is the way that math should be applied in school (but I guess that hardly ever caught on).

The Fifteen Random Walks Book

Posted in 02: The Random Walk Project with tags , , , , , on November 21, 2009 by Chris

This is the end result of all of the experiments I’ve been conducting on the topic of chance; a 140 page documentation book called Fifteen Random Walks: Explorations of Chance in Trajectory. It chronicles the process I used (various stages can be seen in past posts on this site) starting with defining chance; developing a system of generating locations randomly; mapping them out; taking/finding pictures of the places; and finally analyzing the results.

Above: The Cover.  Below: Select spreads

So this project has come to an end—But I’m only getting started.

In case you didn’t know, the things I am doing on this site are a part of my graphic design thesis project at the School of Visual Arts in The Senior Project Class—taught by Paul Sahre and Lindsay Ballant. Up to now, this has been a guided process the whole class has been led through—where we have been doing an exploration of our topic (chance, for me) that we chose after analyzing the first assignment we did, and the reasons behind our solutions. Everything we do informs the next step, culminating in a result that we could have not chosen in the beginning.

So what’s next for me?

Well, I’m working on developing my project idea right now, and expecting some exciting results. All that I am revealing currently is that it will involve chance (obviously), and it will be 11-43% more involved than this project was.

So please, bookmark this page and come back often to see what I’m up to, and let me know what you think.

Lotto Cards

Posted in EXPLORATIONS with tags , , , , , , , , , , on November 8, 2009 by Chris

deep_stack

500 cards—each completely unique—with possible winning numbers for three popular New York Lottery games.

Are you here because you found one of these cards? Did you play any of the numbers? Were you a winner?

example back

I would love to know how your numbers fared for you, where you found the card, or what you think of all of this. Feel welcome to leave a comment, and check back often to see what is new on the site.

multiple_scattered

Why do this? I wanted to bring a new audience to the site, but I wanted to find an unconventional way of going about it. The challenges to me were; to bring curious people in to the site that were open to the idea of chance as an influence in their own life (as well as finding a group outside of art/design community) and also to not just advertise or litter the city with these cards, but give something that could potentially be of value to the viewer if they act on it.

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