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. Thermodynamics is the study of the relations between heat, work, temperature, and energy. Many of these papers neglect this completely and see entropy only dealing with order and chaos. 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, R. (1971) Entropy and Art; an essay on order and disorder. London: University of Southern California Press Ltd.) which had been often cited by other artists (e.g. Allain, M. ‘Art and Entropy: Impressions’, [Online]. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/38722297/ART_and_ENTROPY_Impressions) in their work. Mathilde Marcolli is a respected mathematician and physicist (and sometime dadaist!) with many publications to her name, so I would take her insight more than that of the others mentioned, and not just because it aligns with mine!
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 the book “Fictions” (Borges, J.L. (1998) Fictions. London: Penguin, 2000.).
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.’ I’ve read this part of the book and I think Flam is reading a bit more into it than is written by Borges, but maybe Smithson did that too. (Smithson, R., Flam, J.D. and Flam, J.D. (1996) Robert Smithson, the collected writings. Berkeley: University of California Press. The documents of twentieth-century art, p. xiv.)
According to Flam, Smithson leans heavily for his ideas on Entropy and Time on a work by Eddington, published in 1928. Unfortunately Eddington’s views have been superceded and are out of favour by most physicists i.e. he does not believe in the Big Bang and the creation of space-time, but in the infinity of time, a view which Smithson follows.
(Reference: Eddington, A.S.S. (1928) The nature of the physical world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
I’m also reading another of Smithson’s works “Time Crystals”.
(Reference: Smithson, R., Barkin, A., McAuliffe, C., Craig, G., Helmrich, M. and Parker, F.E. (2018) Robert Smithson : Time Crystals. Caulfield East, VIC St Lucia, QLD: Monash University Museum of Art
The University of Queensland Art Museum.)
Francis Alÿs (Alÿs et al., 2010) Alÿs, Francis, 2010. A Story of Deception. London: Tate Publishing. also targets the infra-ordinary and his work often highlights aspects of entropy (massive amounts of work or busyness resulting in no end-product – an increase in entropy and consumption of time for no useful gain.)
I like Smithson’s work, but it’s not really about Entropy. Is his interpretation artistic licence or just bad interpretations? Postmodernism? This needs further research, thought and reflection.
I’ll have to use Endnote and clean up my referencing system!!!
