Soluble Fish :: digital poetics

“Is it useful to discuss the thermodynamics of an artwork? An artwork is hot when it is densely stacked with information bits, highly organized, and rigidly determined. Hot artwork admits of very little feedback in the system artifact/observer, it’s really a one-way channel; pushing a message from the artist, out through the artwork into the spectator.

Call it cool when the information bits are loosely stacked, of uncertain order, not clearly connected, ambiguous, entropic. Then the system allows the observer to participate, projecting his own sense of order or significance into the work, or setting up resonances by quite unpredicted interaction with it. We must also consider the cut-out mechanism that operates when an artwork overheats; when it is too hot; too densely stacked, with an overburdened accumulation of bits, a sort of infinitely inclusive field. Then the system switches to avery cool state and feedback of a high oder is possible.”

- Roy Ascott, from “Behaviourables and Futuribles” in Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness