In my contextual study outline I mentioned the following:
“I have been reading quite a bit on art and entropy. In the papers I’ve read so far (cite them), from the artists’ standpoint, on entropy there have been fundamental misunderstandings or flaws in the interpretation of the meaning and consequences of entropy as a thermodynamic property. I don’t know if it’s my pedantic side that wants to look at this further, just to show that I know better, or if there could be some interesting angle that hasn’t been previously explored. I’ve read some good art-entropy works, if we put aside the lack of a thermodynamic aspect to the entropy i.e. with time a system will go from ordered to irreversibly dis-ordered. And nowhere is the main point of entropy mentioned (that as entropy reaches a maximum, total energy throughout the system is at equilibrium, and the energy available to cause movement is zero.)“
Today I came across this paper, Marcolli, Matilde, 2015. Entropy and Art, the view beyond Arnheim. (complete reference) online, https://www.its.caltech.edu/~matilde/SlidesEntropyArt.pdf which described in detail quite a bit of entropy theory and misgivings about the principal art and entropy paper by Arnheim (Arnheim, 1971). (Ref. Arnheim, Rudolf, 1971. Entropy and Art: an Essay on Disorder and Order. complete reference) which had been often cited by other artists (e.g. Allain, Monique. ART & ENTROPY: Impressions. (finish reference) in their work.
https://www.its.caltech.edu/~matilde/SlidesEntropyArt.pdf
In his introduction to Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, Jack Flam tells us of Smithson’s interest in Jorge Luis Borges’s work, particularly “Funes the Memorious”. In this story Funes has a riding accident from which he develops an amazing total recall and where his memory reflects infinitely on itself and ‘Funes both suggests and ultimately denies the possibility of gathering the totality of all time and all memory in a single place or person.’ (Flam, Jack, ed., 1996. Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, Oakland, California: University of California Press, p. xiv.)
