A Tangle of Curves in a Euclidean Universe and How Entropy Slices Cuts to the Quick

Holly Crawford

The world is a tangle of curves. Euclidean geometry does not work. It is consistently beautiful and of so logical. We do and seem to need to internalize the externalities and keep it moving. It takes energy. Energy is power, literally and physically. Is power how many hits? Or a website that is internally consistent and exclusive. How many hits do you have? What is your artfacts number? Do we really care? It seems that we do but we're independent scholars in the cave trying to make sense of the shadows on the wall, right? Turn off the lights. Go to bed. When you wish upon a star maybe you'll wake up in the Star Tours line, but no it's just more hyperreality. And you wanted to be a real boy and not a real fake or a fake fake or a real fake. The Disneyland paradigm is too complicated. Which land to pick? And the water wasn't real it was dyed brown and murky. Just too much to think about-Main Street, Tomorrow, Frontier, Adventure or Fantasy. The mind still churns at this late hour, but there is no sweet butter just sweat. You're still hungry. What about Big Mac, no wait that's too late 20th century. Order the MacNuggets instead. Delivered right to your door. Keep your carbon footprint small. Bite size morsels of art theory blended with a secret dipping sauce. Nothing is too rich or complex. Just too commercial to mass market. There is the Goldilocks Theory via the stock market. It was the venture capitalist and some hedge funds who bought and then huffed and buffed until they blew the house down. They like theory! They sold it to everyone. The black box that is every investors' golden parachute. Need a story. Need credibility and credentials. What is you artfacts number? Or Modern Portfolio Theory of Art. Let's see. Diversify, diversify, diversify. So I need to buy off shore and emerging markets. It looks like China and India are over bought. Now what? Everyone is doing it. And to the same tune. The tune is musical chair and the tune is still thesis and anti-thesis. Everyone uses the same eggs. Some are in white shells and others brown. Some are large and other small. I can even just get the whites. All whites and the nothing but the whites, and they do whip up to frothy peaks. And everyone wants the same basket! Can we toss the baby with and have no more thesis and anti-thesis art. God is dead. Analog is dead. Digital silicon world is here. Adam Smith is dead. We're now tripping over the invisible hand. Science is fuzzy, relative and gets all the attention (and money). Science is progress. Science evolves. Science is modern. What happened to post? Or was that the hitching post of art. Tie up here. Externals become internals and we push on. One to where? I don't want to go there. The Art of the Thesis and anti-thesis. Science has thesis and then hypothesizes and tests. Science is basic and applied. Applied art: what is it? Is it illustration or propaganda? Illustration of what? Is that art that the market wants? Or art that illustrates the theory? Does it have to be use and useless, art and artless. Is the revolution justƒ.entropy! "Entropy is usually denoted by the letter {S}. Clausius's entropy was defined for an isolated system in equilibrium which was undergoing reversible processes. "In contrast there is the entropy of Prigogine that describes the behavior of open dissipate structures. Boltzmann's statistical entropy and Shannon's information entropy are mirror images of one another, and this asymmetry causes grief to persons who seek absolute consistency. There is Eddington's 'arrow of time,' which expresses the direction of events and is a foundation stone for the indisputability of irreversible processes. And then there is Kolmogorov's entropy, which describes the deviations between the trajectories of dynamical systems and bears no resemblance what so ever to Clausius's original definition." What is that process again? Or just turn off the lights. It's only the flicker of the flat screen on your desk. At least put it to sleep.

Holly Crawford is cross media artist, poet, behavioral scientist, economist and art historian. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Essex in Art History and Theory, B.A and M.A. in Economics and M.S. in Behavioral Science from UCLA. From 2004-2006, she was a non-clinical Fellow at NYU Medical School Psychoanalytic Center. Her art and poetry ([www.art-poetry.info]5 ) give new meanings and draws categories themselves into question through transformative juxtapositions. Her projects include: Offerings (Ars Electronica, (.net Participant); Open Adoption, The Road, Hyphens, Voice Over, Found Punctuation (video) Tate Modern 2007, My I have your autograph? (unofficial, Basel Miami Art Fair 2007), Critical Conversations in a Limo, NY 2006 (VIP project, Armory), 2007 in Melbourne (MIAF) & San Francisco (The LAB & Sesnon Gallery UCSC). Curated projects are Sound Art Limo, NY and Melbourne 2007, Flatland Limo, NYC 2008 and Live in the Limo, NYC 2009. Many projects are ongoing, site specific and participatory. Publications: Attached to the Mouse, 2006 and catalogue essay, "Disney and Pop" in Once Upon a Time Walt Disney Studio; Artistic Bedfellows, edited,2008. She is the Director of AC[Institute Direct Chapel] which she created. It is a set of spaces in New York City for experimental art (http://www.artcurrents.org) She taught art at UCLA and SVA. She was born in California and now lives in New York City.

A.B. Cambel, Applied Chaos Theory. New York: Academic Press, Inc.,1993.

Entropy Slices is a collaged long poem that I worked on from 1992-2006.

{S}0000 is used to designate an entropy slice-

entropy slices is one poem, which are fragments, elements and voices. I have posted it on my site: http://www.art-poetry.info

It is collaged from instructions, things that I have had to deal with, that have flowed past me. They are from the following sources: newspapers and newspaper's indices; random instructions from drugs; canned and boxed food and my personal care products; directions to my allergists office (written by her); road signs; rules for entering a poetry contest; computer manuals; receipts; recipes; the complete instructions for the care of living Christmas tree that I bought in 1994; the instructions from pages 45-47 from the Sony Color Rear Video Projector Operating Instructions booklet that I own; pop songs in chronological order from Billboard; parts of randomly chosen obituaries from several different newspaper indices; quotes from literature, last lines or first lines; part of the dialogue of a movie, His Girl Friday, as heard and transcribed by me while listening to that movie once; a Hallmark Cards Inc.- Mother's Day card that I received 5/95; the State Bar of California Approved Health Care Plan Guaranteed Issue Prudent Buyer Plan For Individuals and Their Families booklet pgs 5-6; three discarded and found memos; land excursion descriptions and instructions for tours from a cruise of French Polynesia that I took in 1995; The Bible;which had some early instructions; Sections I and II, and the first sentence of section III of Report No. 2307 on Remote Handling of nuclear wastes by my father, William Clyde Shissler Jr.; Shakespear-it's always good to toss in some of him--and the text from some of the Christmas cards that I received in 1993 and 1994; instruction safety card from a flight I took in 1997-I don't remember which airline; SEC Rule 204-2 ; instructions manuals for the new appliances from a house that we leased September 1, 2001.