The Crusade

In a behaved without threehundredpage the face of specks
grew preying Black voices mouths, the bibles
swallowed up the sun invalidated air was summer with
suppressed dislodged The wind roamed through
the long squabble and sobbed and wilkerson
the secret templar.


The above is an example of accidental poetry. More specifically, it's computer-generated spam poetry. I found these actual words in a spam email I received. The only changes I made were to add line breaks, and give the piece a title which seemed appropriate.

The words are not only unintentionally beautiful, but seem to have meaning and a coherent theme. This is surprising, since they are sentence fragments randomly pieced together from various texts. Spammers sometimes use this technique to trick Bayesian filters, but an unexpected side effect is that these computer-generated texts can be quite interesting and poetic.

Abstract

Here is an accidental abstract artwork by Duchamp on Flickr. Again this is an accidental double exposure of two separate photos. I'm seeing the word diptych used on Flickr a lot to refer to photos or works with two distinct sections. The term triptych is a familiar one, referring to works in three sections, but I've not heard diptych used before.

"Lost"

Our first exhibit is a wonderful accidental double exposure, from mugley on Flickr. It makes me think of the fragmented and fractured nature of city life. The superimposed shot seems to surround the woman in the picture like an aura.

Accidentally Beautiful

This blog is about accidental art and things that are accidentally beautiful, without any deliberate intent. Nancy Ross refers to accidental art as "art without an artist".

Sometimes there may be an artist involved, but accidental art occurs when they create or capture something they didn't intend. Photography is one medium where accidental art often occurs. Examples of this include double exposures and accidental shots with aesthetic quality.

Or there may literally be no artist involved, as in the case of natural formations which are aesthetically pleasing. Or, art generated by computer without human intervention.

This blog will contain featured works and thoughts on accidental art. The definition of art we use is an inclusive one, covering not just visual art but also the written word - everything from painting and photography to accidentally beautiful spam email you might find in your inbox.

The phenomenon of accidental art raises many interesting questions about the nature of art itself. Does it prove that beauty truly rests solely in the eye of the beholder? Does the amount of effort an artist puts into a work matter? Is everything art, at least potentially?

I don't pretend to know the answers to these questions, but I hope you will enjoy exploring them with me. If you have thoughts on accidental art, or works you would like to share, please leave a comment, or contact me at accidentally.beautiful -at- gmail.com.