Magda Cebokli - An Analysis of Variance
6 AUGUST – 4 SEPTEMBER 2016
Opening Event: Saturday 6 August, 2 - 4pm
Opening Event: Saturday 6 August, 2 - 4pm
An Analysis of Variance
"A general procedure for partitioning the overall variability in a set of data into components due to specific causes and random variation."
Oxford Concise Dictionary of Mathematics 1996 Oxford University Press NY
The quest for certainty and for universal laws to explain the universe we inhabit has characterised the history of scientific thinking. Logic, rationality, evidence have been the values underpinning this search. Through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and into the modern age, this trajectory continued to unfold supporting a world view of underlying consistencies and predictabilities.
The developments in quantum mechanics however raised questions, significant doubts about this ever being achievable. Likewise, theorising in complex systems and the associated mathematics cast doubts on prediction of the specific. Perhaps we now have to accept that all knowledge has a probability statement attached and that the best we can ever hope for is the identification of patterns or systems of consistency.
Order and chaos seem to be the twin poles between which stretches the tightrope on which we all dance. Scientific research methodology has developed a set of strategies for dealing with the omnipresence of complexity and uncertainty, both at the experimental design stage and at the stage of data treatment. There are methods for controlling chance, for the intrusion of extraneous factors, for finding consistencies and clusters within large masses of figures.
Nor is the exploration of chance a new area of investigation in the arts. In the visual arts Ellsworth Kelly, Gerhard Richter, Francois Morellett have all worked on this theme. The Surrealists felt that chance was a gateway to exploring the unconscious. John Cage used it to create music.
Randomness and the operation of varying probabilities have also featured in my own work in recent years. This current series of paintings based on the Latin Square, is a continuation of work inspired by the contemplation of the relationship between structure and chance, constraint and diversity.
The Latin Square has a history of usage in experimental design. It is a grid constructed so that the cell contents within it vary within each row and column, each condition appearing only once in each row and column. In this series of paintings, the Latin Squares are further structured. They follow a Geretche framework in that the 9x9 square is further sectioned into 9 sets of spaces, each space containing 9 units. An algorithm determines the distribution of the contents across the cells.
So much structure, yet so much potential for variation.
- Cebokli, 2016
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