Chapter 2 — Circuit-Bending’s New Instrumentarium Though certainly in existence earlier, the first known examples of suminagashi are dated to Japan during the Heian era (794–1185). This exquisite art, one of floating ink on pure water, produces sublime images frozen in their metamorphosis and captured forever by the printing paper, dipped carefully upon the liquid surface (see Figure 2-1).
FIGURE 2-1: Suminagashi by Ghazala, 2002
This art was held supreme by the Japanese people, the paper so valued that gold flakes were integrated into the material and only the highest poetry was penned upon it, the script following the surreal lines of ink. Chance art is behind the changing configurations of Calder’s mobiles and many other kinetic pieces, and is certainly behind the work of many abstract painters. We don’t need to go as far as the action painting of the American abstract expressionists for an example. Just look how oil paints might blend within a single impressionist stroke of even a controlled painting, or how watercolors bleed out into the paper and into each other, quite freely, to define their medium. To one degree or another, art is often chancy.
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