automatic feedback oscillator

The ABC of creative self-oscillation for the autonomous artist

This is an amplifier with the output fed-back into the input channel. The parameters are set on the threshold that sits right at the moment of self-oscillation creating instabillity and causing the system to flip-flop between two states. It becomes highly susceptible to fluctuations in the enviroment like miniscule changes in power. This creates the paradox of a repetitive pattern of unpredictable behaviour. Chaos within limitcycles.

I prefer these chaotic machines as a number generator over a random number generator that uses an algorithm as a source because of their obvious accidental clumsiness.
Their function is not so much to be totally unpredictable but to be undeliberate.
There is no tension in true randomness.

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Lobomatic is a machine created from an old tabletennisrobot that mimics the effect of an unstable feedback oscillator.
The object (ball) is automatically fed back into the canon so it will keep on firing.
The wild path of the ball causes a-rythmic firing.
This way chances of hitting the target are
increased considerably. At the same time the
machine is stuck in a vicious circle that
will only end when it breaks down.
If fictionally, the output would be
understood as communication; the mode would
be that of 'suspense'. The crux of the
message is in the timing. The 'you know it's
going to happen but you don't know when'.
The 'when' being the stimulus to which the
message is attached.