Film of Changes, (or How I Free Myself with Rules)

Aleatoric or deterministic, mystical or logical, are familiar adjectives in experimental music since the 1950s. For instance, in 1951 John Cage used a Chinese Oriental fortune teller system to create Music of Changes for piano- he consulted the I Ching to make compositional decisions, to achieve his goal of leaving no trace of the composer on the music. With the advent of digital computers, composing like Cage became commonplace. Today, musicians are versed in programming computers to simulate randomness and or follow rules. Computers have become important musical instruments.

Computing technologies, however, are ever-evolving. And so is film.

This project investigates the aesthetics, philosophy and ethics of a traditional Chinese form of cleromancy -I Ching, or book of changes, by writing bespoke coding language and combining this tool with traditional media landscapes like film and creative arts, and related hybrid forms to subvert Its predominant uses.

This approach is to encourage the unforeseen in the filming process, which is breaking the filmmaking rules, and relinquishing control from the filmmaker's decision. The current video and audio outcomes are based on the speculation that there is a hunch in the film industry that a systematic approach to cinematic notation is possible but has yet to be developed. As such, filmmakers could use a system of symbols to build a story, just like the staves and notations used by musicians.