The Machine
Inspiration
Deep Note
A cluster of detuned voices gliding into one chord. A model for tension-tuned strings gliding into tune.
Dogme 95
Danish film movement with a strict ten-rule "Vow of Chastity." Precedent for a numbered, rule-based movement with a central registry. Many certified films bent or broke the rules. A 2025 revival, Dogma 25, wrote a new rule set.
Graphic scores
Scores made of images rather than notation, leaving sound and instrumentation to the performer: Earle Brown's December 1952 and Cornelius Cardew's Treatise. Precedent for a shared score that any failure could realize.
Oulipo
French group making literature under self-imposed constraints. Georges Perec's novel La Disparition avoids the letter "e" entirely. Precedent for absurd constraints as a creative engine, the core belief behind the Machine.
Phasing
Identical parts drifting out of sync against each other. A model for free-running units before the focus lock.
The Five Obstructions
Von Trier challenges Leth to remake his 1967 short film The Perfect Human five times, each under a new set of obstructions. Constraints as the creative engine, and every remake another answer to the same prompt.
Wall drawings
Artworks that exist as written instructions carried out by other people; directions range from loose to exact. The model for the Machine as a set of rules others realize. His 1967 essay "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art" says "the idea becomes a machine that makes the art"; the Machine inverts this.