In 2020, when students of Insight School of Art were working from home due to the pandemic lock down, I made three videos of Insight teachers exploring the idea of making art using chance.
Matt Davies and Celestine Thomas worked together, turning each other’s scribbles into fun characters, Lara Sparey used a dice to decide the colours that she would add to a grid, and Rob Verrill went for a walk taking photographs without looking at the subject.
Underneath the three videos below, I’ve added links to other artists who have used an element of chance in their work too.
…. and some more artists who have used an element of chance in their work:
In this video you can see Damien Hirst making one of his Spin Paintings. Maybe you can make your own?
This video talks about Dada and how Jean Arp would drop ripped paper to make art. At the end of the video it describes how to make a Dada poem. David Bowie used a similar technique to write songs. Maybe you could make an artwork using a similar idea?
Was Jackson Pollock’s work made using chance?
Here, MOMA have made a video to explain ‘3 Standard Stoppages’ by Marcel Duchamp who dropped string to reimagine what a meter should look like.
We showed this video on class a couple of years back, where artist Webster and Noble made portraits of each other whist blind folded.
Read about how Sophie Calle contacted all the people in an address book she found in Paris to get a picture of what the owner looked like. Have a read too about Vito Acconci’s work Following Piece from 1969, where he documented following strangers in New York until they entered a building. And finally, Bruce Nauman, who let mice and his cat determine the out put of his work.