Marc Berghaus This piece displays the remnants of an epic battle with chance. During one day in 2002, I attempted to predict the outcomes of simple random processes- rolling dice, drawing cards, etc. Whenever the results would differ from my prediction, I would simply destroy that randomizing object: smash the dice with a hammer, shred the cards, break the coins that didn’t flip correctly, shred the non-linear equations that I was unable to solve (which was all of them). I would then put those remains into the tiny bottles, and then insert them into my neat, ordered grid. For one day, I was able to defeat chance. (The newspaper weather forecasts which disagreed with my own predictions took several more days.) The eighth bottle is empty; the piece was incomplete when it was first shown, but I have grown to enjoy its unfinished potential. |