Entropy and information in process art
Rahtz, Dominic (2021) Entropy and information in process art. Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft. ISSN 0044-2186 (In Press)
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The period of the late 1960s in American art is often characterized as containing tendencies that involve a shift in condition from, to use the critical terms current at the time, the material to the ›dematerialized‹, or from form to ›Anti Form‹. In the case of Process Art, the dispersal of the material that up to then would have constituted the solidity of the art object meant that the work was interpreted as approaching a condition of »thinness«, of relative immateriality, and, in its apparent condition as the mere residue of a process, as formless. These conditions can be attributed to an artistic concern with the phases of matter, which may be seen, in the direction of dissipation, in Robert Morris’s Steam, from 1967, or Robert Barry’s inert gas series, and, in the direction of solidification, in Richard Serra’s Splashing, from 1968, or in Robert Smithson’s interest in crystal formation. The shift in phase may be from a liquid to a gas, or from a liquid to a solid, but what seems to be important is the event or the process of the shift itself and how it entailed a change in sense of the traditional notions of material and form, and of their relation.
Article published in special issue edited by Christian Berger and Annika Schlitte.
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