Sunday scribbles #8: My relationship with luck, RNG and naming paintings.

To start things off I will let a good friend of mine explain the concept of Random number generator, in short: RNG. This is a friend who has already helped me out lots of times when I needed some quick information on certain subjects: good old Wikipedia. So, according to our friend, RNG can be described as followed: "Random number generation is a process by which, often by means of a random number generator, a sequence of numbers or symbols is generated, that cannot be reasonably predicted better than by random chance." To further introduce you to the story, I have to go way back: back to my gaming days as a teen.

When I was young I was addicted to the game Lineage 2 in every way possible. This game is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). In short: a game where you have to grind hours to get something in return. Except for a small number of specific situations, skill doesn't come into play. Only the hard dedication of spending every second of your free time in the virtual world of the game is rewarded. And maybe some pay-to-win principles and cheaters, but let's leave those topics for other fora. In our honest world, we accept the fact that in order to get good at the game, you have to grind day in, day out. To give a small example of how addicted I was: if I had to go to bed at 10 o'clock, I set an alarm at midnight, boot up my computer and played for several hours. I then went back to bed so I had some sleep before heading to school (sorry mom and dad). Yes, it was that bad at certain moments. Now you are probably thinking: I like JDW as an artist, why the heck is he babbling about gaming? Well in this particular game the concept RNG is a big thing. When defeating a monster, which drops items, there's a certain chance of it dropping something good. So in order to get the item you want, you may have to repeat the same actions over and over again until there's one monster who drops what you want.

In creating art there's not something called RNG, but there is something people tend to say quite often when they see certain techniques applied: luck. When scrolling through the wondrous worlds of social media, I see a lot of people commenting that the result of using a spin machine, is just based on luck. Well, what is luck exactly? Wikipediaaaa, help me out please: "To be lucky means to be favored by some unforeseen event. In this sense, happiness means the prosperity that comes to a person without his influence on it." Before the spin machine is actually spinning, there is zero amount of luck involved. I think we can all agree on that. I, the artist, am the one who does everything up to that point. When the spin machine starts spinning, by my action, the paint on the canvas is starting to live its own life. And that my friends, is the beauty of this technique. Yes, a certain portion can be defined by luck, but many forget that luck is something you can actually influence. When creating these paintings, things don't always work out the way you want, as I have said in earlier scribbles. So what is it that I then do? I continue, as long as necessary. When after five attempts I get a result with which I am beyond happy, is this attributed to luck, or my persistence? I'll leave that to you to decide.

This brings me to another resemblance to my gaming past. In Lineage 2 there were three factors which decided my success in the game: RNG, dedication and my clan. Dedication is a classic. For me this resulted in an addiction when I was young, not very positive. But when you try to see the good in every situation, I did have one thing to which I was very dedicated. I was part of the best clan on that specific server, and together with a small group of other people, I was amongst the founding fathers. In real life I am not officially part of a clan, but I am building my mastermind group. Because those three factors in Lineage 2, which helped me towards success in that virtual world, are not only applicabled to the gaming world. In real life it is almost the same. In your way to success, you need loads of dedication, the right people around you, and a little bit of luck. About this last one, I hope you won't forget what the great stoic Seneca said about this. "Luck is where opportunity meets preparation."

This should remind us that we make our own luck. This is a big reason why I love making art using this spin machine. I am in love with the amount of randomness of it all. In life we often try to point out everything, which is okay. But we notice that, wether we like it or not, we are pushed or drawn in different directions. The path we have set out to follow is constantly changing. We only need a direction, or something to guide us, nothing more. So when making a painting, I have an idea of which colors to use and what technique to apply, but everything after that is out of my hands, and I LOVE it. That is also the reason why at this point I am using another friend to name my paintings: google translate. When looking at a painting I get a certain feeling and think of certain words. The word itself often isn't something I want to use to name a painting. Seeing it's abstract, I want to give people the chance of making up their own mind about these pieces of art, without being too much influenced by the direction I am giving it through its name. So what better to scroll through different languages, translating what I actually have in mind. Maori and Hawaiian are so cool btw! Closing off here, because there are still a lot of things to do today. Talk to you later, and best of luck in whatever you are doing ;-)