Aleatory

Aleatory (or aleatoric) means "pertaining to luck", and derives from the Latin word alea, the rolling dice. Aleatoric art is that which exploits the principle of randomness. One of the most ambitious aleatory projects in poetry is Raymond Queneau's Cent Mille Milliards de Po?mes (Hundred Thousand Billion Poems).

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John Cage was a very important name in aleatoric music. At the premiere of his most famous work, 4' 33", the famous virtuoso pianist David Tudor sat at the piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds and the reactions of the audience (whispering, coughs, laughs ...) formed the music.

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In film-making, there are several avant-garde examples; Fred Camper's SN (1984; first screening 2002) uses coin-flipping to determine which three of 18 possible reels to screen and what order they should go in (4896 permutations). Barry Salt, now better known as a film scholar, is known to have made a film six reels long which takes the word aleatory quite literally by including a customized die for the projectionist to roll to determine the reel order (720 permutations).

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In contemporary music, The Books compose in an aleatoric style, using "found sound" to add content to their works.

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Randomness: :For other meanings, see Random (disambiguation)....

Poetry: Poetry (ancient Greek: ????? (poieo) = I create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user...

Raymond Queneau: Raymond Queneau (February 21, 1903 – October 25, 1976) was a French poet and novelist....