Artist: Joshua Shanholtz        Built with Director


“God Does not play Dice”- Albert Einstein. This famous statement has become less and less valid over the decades due to the advances in molecular physics. It seems, as Steven Hawkins said, that God can and does play dice. What does this have to do with art? I believe that God uses randomness when creating in order to buffer out the predictable and the rigid. The computer being a digital tool, must be rigid and predictable in order to run properly. Although the computer can produce complex and dynamic things, it can all be traced to math and human creation. The computer can not produce true random numbers, no matter how random they seem, the can be traced to the internal clock and a math algorithm. Randomness of the analog and physical kind are the only true was to produce real unpredictability. This is a power and gift that is granted only to the physical and analog beings. I believe we have this unavoidable element of unpredictability ingrained in our creative souls’. My art piece is a devotion to God’s creation and gift of randomness. This project is very elementary and simple in order to emphasize the concept. The die is color coded for the camera and has assigned a specific number to each color. The images used are from both nature and my personal mark making. They are positioned on the digital canvas in the order that the die tells them. I am interested in exploiting the element of randomness within certain parameters in order to create beautiful and complexly unique things just as nature does.

   All artwork copyright 2006, SAIC, Art Institute of Chicago site design by Seth Hunter