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1993

Art, science and technology in an expanded field

Adam Robert Lucas University of Wollongong, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Lucas, Adam Robert, "Art, science and technology in an expanded field" (1993). Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers. 821. https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/821

Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Art, science and technology in an expanded field

Abstract The author suggests that new concepts in twentieth-century science not only provides commonalitites between the arts, sciences and humanities, they also point to the emergence of a new philosophy of with some promising political, sociological and technological implication. These developments demand a throught-going ethical practice and a fundamental reformulation of accepted notions of creativity, consciousness and natural and social organization. Outlining key concepts and discoveries in twentieth-century science and philosophy, the author draws attention to the existence of a strong organismic or process tradition in Western culture that is re-emerging in various fields of the physical, biological and social sciences. The author asserts that such a change in science and technology will have global ramifications for humands and that it is the amplification of these insightso t which artists should turn their attention.

Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Law

Publication Details Lucas, A. R. (1993). Art, science and technology in an expanded field. Leonardo, 26 (4), 335-345.

This journal article is available at Research Online: https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/821 Leonardo

Art, Science and Technology in an Expanded Field Author(s): Adam Lucas Source: Leonardo, Vol. 26, No. 4 (1993), pp. 335-345 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1575929 . Accessed: 25/08/2013 22:46

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http://www.jstor.org SPECIAL SECTION: DEVELOPMENT THROUGH IMAGES Art, Science and Technology in an Expanded Field

Adam Lucas

ABSTRACT

Theauthor suggests that new concepts Artists working with new technologies occupy a The other approach, which has intwentieth-century science not only provide commonalitiesbetween the arts, sciences that is with ethical and aesthetic dilemmas. become synonymous with science territory overflowing andhumanities, they also point to the new in most can be Each new technological development engenders problems. people's minds, emergenceof a newphilosophy of nature It is undoubtedly quite difficult for artists (as it is for most peo- identified as mechanistic, reduc- withsome promising political, sociological ple) to orient themselves within such a rapidly transforming tionist, anthropocentric, competi- andtechnological implications. These field. This is true when we consider the that tive, hierarchical, absolutist and developmentsdemand a thorough-going ethi- especially challenge cal anda fundamentalreformulation these new media to traditional and on the of practise present contemporary posited efficacity predic- ofaccepted notions of creativity, assumptions about the transformativepowers of art. tion and control. But the ultimate consciousnessand natural and social organi- To be more specific, it does not take an artist'simagination to hegemony that the mechanistic zation.Outlining key concepts and recognize that any new technology can be as easily deployed for view has achieved has more to do discoveriesintwentieth-century science and theauthor draws attention to the the of and mass with political and economic expe- philosophy, purposes promoting ideological propaganda existenceof a strongorganismic orprocess manipulation as it can be used to further the interests of human diency than any innate theoretical traditioninWestern culture that is re- liberation and mutual understanding. The dichotomies inher- superiority. Just the same, mecha- emerginginvarious fields of the physical, bio- ent in the cultural incorporation of new technologies were rec- nism has reached its own limits. It logicaland social sciences. The author as as the 1930s Adorno and Horkheimer in has failed both and con- assertsthat such a changein science and ognized long ago by practically willhave ramificationsfor their Dialectic to deal with the technology global ofEnlightenment [1]. ceptually complex- humansand that it is theamplification of A central concern of most of the theory undertaken in this ities of nature and human culture theseinsights to whichartists should turn area since then involves the generative role of scientific dis- and is arguably responsible for theirattention. course in the constitution of new technologies. The logic of many of the environmental and theory and design that underlies the technologies that sur- economic crises currently facing round us is intimately bound up with prevailing orthodoxies in humanity. the sciences. However, the classical assumptions that underlie A new scientific philosophy of nature is, however, beginning many of these orthodoxies have not only been questioned by to emerge-a philosophy that has more in common with the analyses in linguistics, anthropology, political economy and organismic approach than it does with the mechanistic. A cen- psychoanalysis, they have also come under serious criticism tral focus of its attention is the empirically demonstrable inter- from within many of the scientific disciplines in which they connectedness of all things; an interconnectedness that have, until quite recently, prevailed. The bases for all of these demands a thorough-going ethical practise, encompassing not criticisms share many things in common. Basic assumptions only human activities but natural processes as well. It is also a regarding what constitutes nature, culture, human perception philosophy that demands humility; the old certainties of unre- and individual identity have all come under scrutiny. stricted prediction and control are grounded on false assump- The motivations for these analyses similarly rest on a pro- tions. Some scientists claim that this change heralds the found dissatisfaction with accepted wisdom that is increasingly beginning of the post-Einsteinian era in both science and being perceived as collaborating in an oppressive network of human culture: the recognition that "God does play dice" and alienated social relations with little, if any, ethical basis. An that uncertainty and chaos are not only ubiquitous through- armoury of epistemological bombshells is in the process of for- out the universe, but also provide the dynamic matrix within mulation that promises to explode many of the myths under which new forms of order are constantly being created. Such a which the human and natural sciences appear to have conclusion should prove interesting to both artists and scien- laboured for centuries. tists. Having emerged from a number of different scientific Over the past 30 years, a number of developments in the sci- disciplines, the new evolutionary of self-organization ences have served to revive an ancient philosophical dispute accepts as one of its fundamental premises the notion that cre- with important implications for the ways in which science con- ativity is immanent in all natural processes, including human ceives itself and the world. These developments touch on the culture. In such a view, humanity and technology are regarded nature of self, on creativity and on the whole notion of form as recent evolutionary manifestations of a creative principle and organization in nature and human culture. that embraces the whole cosmos. The transformative powers For more than four centuries, there has been an ongoing of art and science are but two manifestations of this ongoing struggle for ideological supremacy within Western science creative process. between two very different approaches to nature and human culture. The first and oldest of these approaches can be Adam Lucas (educator), 8/8 Vialoux Avenue, Paddington, New South Wales, Australia, 2021. described as organismic, holistic, cooperative, collectivist, rela- Received 24 1990. tivistic and posited on the unity in diversity of all things. September

? 1993 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 335-345, 1993 335 AN OLD WORLDVIEW WITH A the present through the alchemical, vital- applications of chaos theory and nonequi- NEW MYTHOLOGY ist and romantic traditions of Western art, librium systems theory. science and philosophy [2]. It is my contention that the shift to pro- The idea that nature is inherently Although organicism has been made to cess-oriented science heralds the emer- dynamic and creative, rather than passive appear esoteric, occult and distinctly gence of a new and highly sophisticated and simply created, is both ancient and "unscientific" in the latter half of the form of organicism. Although it does widespread. It exists in Taoism and other twentieth century by self-proclaimed share something in common with older Eastern philosophies, as well as in the "realists"and "rationalists"[3], it has nev- organismic philosophies, it incorporates a shamanic and matriarchal belief systems ertheless reemerged in the of wealth of new empirical insights that are of tribal and early agrarian cultures. This process-oriented approaches in a number applicable to a vast range of hitherto idea can also be found in certain strains of different scientific fields. The shift in poorly understood phenomena in the of Western mystical and religious orientation marks a profound transition physical and social sciences. thought. But perhaps most importantly in science's understanding of nature and Some of the unifying principles that for artists and scientists, various manifes- culture. It is a shift that began with relativ- have emerged from this shift to a pro- tations of this idea, which has come to be ity, quantum theory and cybernetics and cess-oriented science are the comple- known as organicism,have survived into is now continuing through numerous mentarity of matter and energy and of field and form in any description of physical and behavioural processes; the essential openness and unpredictability, Fig. 1. Gabriella Possum Nungurraye, (a) Bush TuckerDreaming, acrylic paint on stretched, yet interdependence, of all phenomena; primed linen, 104 x 144 cm. The painting is a symbolic representation of women's work in the self-similarity that natural processes collecting food and other materials for ceremonial purposes around the Mt. Wedge region of show at different scales; the fundamental the Central Western Desert. to the elements in the (b) Key represented painting. role that chaos plays in the spontaneous creation of more complex forms of natu- ral order; and the recognition that indi- vidual perception does not passively mirror an objective reality "out there," but instead is a process by which organ- isms actively createthe world of experi- ence [4]. Although these unifying principles are empirically based, many artists have intu- itively reached similar conclusions. To give an idea how common organismic views have been in twentieth-century art, the following list comprises artists who held such beliefs, as expressed through their theoretical and personal writings: Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, Jean Arp, Barbara Hep- worth, Henry Moore, Antonin Artaud, Joan Mir6, Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini, Robert Motherwell, Theodore Roszak, Bryon Gysin, Joseph Beuys, and the recent "Land" artists of Britain, Richard Spinafex including Andy Goldsworthy, Long, Chris Drury, etc. Wildbush wheat- The following quote from Artaud's Heliogabaleexpresses intuitively the cen- tral theme of organicism: Darkarea-night I mean to say that in Syriathe earth lives, and that there are stones that live ... sky, MilkyWay such stones are the vertebrae in the Sacredwater ... Rootsof the precious corners of the earth hole-sacred site stones that live as and animals wheatbush plants live, Bushberries- and as it may be said, the sun lives [5]. Wind dreaming largebush trackthrough Devastation this country THE POST-EINS TEINIAN ; caused by strong PHILOSOPHY OF ORGANISM Soakageor -,4r ~ windpassing waterhole ; throughthe desert In both Georg Hegel's and Alfred North sticks Whitehead's of Digging Twowomen Bushseeds to be 4 Redand yellow philosophies "organism," are one Wildbush beans diggingfor bush groundfor damper(a ochrein the ground living, biological organisms only potatoesor "yams" breadbaked on coals) special case of the generalized metaphys-

336 Lucas: Art, Science and Technology in an Expanded Field ical category of organism that they pro- from a more inclusive systemic memory interesting to note that Kandinsky'smeta- posed [6]. Although the ancient Greeks, corresponding to the historical back- physical speculations at the turn of the including the Stoics, Plato and Aristotle, ground of the larger environment in rela- century are, in fact, much closer to con- as well as the alchemists, vitalists and ear- tion to other organisms of its own kind. temporary scientific conceptions of the lier Romantic naturphilosophersof the Like a number of other philosophers, organization of matter than is the atom- Enlightenment, had held to similar including Friedrich Nietschze, Samuel istic that remains the "com- beliefs, Hegel and Whitehead were two Butler and C.S. Peirce, Sheldrake has monsense" view to this day. of the earliest philosophers to systemati- proposed that this organic systems mem- With these points in mind, it now cally explore the scientific and philo- ory is not just a feature of what we seems appropriate to discuss the remark- sophical implications of such a notion. understand as life, but of the whole of able foresight of some other artists earli- For Hegel, the term "organism" not the natural world. He proposes that er this century who tried to promote a only applied to the realm of nature with each kind of organic system, whether it synthesis of science and art within an its biological systems, but also to the be a crystal, a bird or a particular form organismic framework. Generally realm of geist ("spirit"or "culture")with of behaviour, is shaped by morphicfields, regarded by their contemporaries as its political and cultural systems and insti- from the Greek word morphemeaning either mad or hopeless idealists, these tutions. Hegel was, however, unwilling to "form."These morphic fields are specific artists have been better treated by time extend his concept of organism into the to particular processes, shapes and pat- than have their critics. Of all these so-called "inorganic" world because he terns, and contain a collective and artists, the one who appears today to believed, as did many of his contempo- cumulative memory of all that system's have been most relevant in his concerns raries and successors, that inanimate past and present states. They are also and aspirations is Joseph Beuys-a man nature is governed by mechanistic laws probabilistic, rather than fixed (as are who lived and breathed his personal phi- [7]. Whitehead and more contemporary the pneuma, entelechiesand Begriffof the losophy to his deathbed. process philosophers such as Erich Stoics, Aristotle and Hegel, respectively), and Sheldrake have all in that are to envi- Jantsch Rupert they constantly open THE EXPANDED CONCEPT contested this position, however [8]. ronmental and internal fluctuations. OF ART Whitehead and Sheldrake have drawn Such formative fields may stabilize attention to quantum phenomena to jus- over time. For example, salt crystals have Beuys was convinced of the pressing tify their claims [9], Jantsch has pointed one distinctive crystalline form, although social need to forge a new and dynamic to far-from-equilibriumphenomena. The thereis no chemicalreason why they should relationship between art and science. His arguments in favour of these positions not take up any numberof equallyprobable statement that "everyone is an artist" will be discussed later. All three have sup- forms.Depending on how strong the res- came from his belief that the word "art" ported the notion that organismic onance of past examples of that form refers to universal creative faculties that behaviour is pervasive throughout nature may be, cataclysmic or chaotic changes manifest themselves not only in nature, and human culture. may cause certain forms and their corre- but throughout human culture. Whether Along with Hegel, all of these theorists sponding fields to either disintegrate or it be in medicine, agriculture, education, have agreed that an organism can be evolve into other fields/forms with a law, economics or administration, this defined as a cooperative, self-organizing new behaviour and/or appearance. universal creativity finds its constant entity characterized by the immanence Jantsch called the process by which expression in innumerable cultural of its pattern of organization. These information contained within these forms. For Beuys, the principle of creativ- immanent patterns of organization share fields is transferred synchrony;Sheldrake ity was identical to the notion of constant some features in common with the theo- has called it morphicresonance [10]. renewal and resurrection. This basic logical notion of "spirit."They have been For those who are puzzled as to what principle, Beuys believed, should consti- called pneuma by the Stoics; entelechyby connection such concepts have to artistic tute the foundation for a "new science of Aristotle; monads by Anne Conway and practise, the following is a quote from freedom." Liebniz; Begriff, or absolute ideas, by Kandinsky's 1912 paper, "On the Beuys believed that, once an estab- Hegel; individual subjectiveaims, or initial Problem of Form": lished cultural form becomes paralyzed primordial aims, by Whitehead; emergent and incapable of further evolution, it Behindmatter the creativespirit is con- systemsproperties by Jantsch; and morphic cealed withinmatter . . the absoluteis must be metamorphosed into a living, fields by Sheldrake. not to be sought in the form (material- dynamic form that further cultivates Both Jantsch and Sheldrake have ism). The form is alwaysbound to its development and creative expansion. drawn attention to the fact that these time,is relative,since it is nothingmore This was the basis for than the means in Beuys's "expanded immanent patterns of organization must necessary today of art." In the words of Heiner whichtoday's revelation manifests itself, concept contain some kind of organic memory. resounds. The resonance is then the Statchelhaus, the expanded concept of Both have proposed that this memory is soul of the formwhich can onlybecome art "wasno mere theory, but a basic prin- contained within probabilistic fields of alive throughthe resonanceand which ciple of existence that transformed worksfrom within to without.The form that form to [12]. organization give physical is the outer of the inner con- everything" and mental expression In this phenomena. tent [11]. formulating concept, Beuys On the one hand, these fields of orga- came to the conclusion that human cul- nization transcend spatial separation. On Kandinsky'sinsights were undoubtedly ture (including science) had evolved the other, they have the ability to accu- influenced by evolutionary speculations from "fundamental ideas on art." These mulate information over time. Conse- of his time-the essay from which this ideas were expressed culturally through quently, each organism has a unique quote is taken specifically mentions the collective or individual rituals aimed at memory that constitutes its own individu- evolution of new values as the impetus for maintaining or reestablishing an inti- al history, but this unique history emerges social and cultural transformation. It is mate relationship with nature on the

Lucas:Art, Science and Technology in an Expanded Field 337 Fig 2. Phillip George, MnemonicNotations, (a) No. 7 (1991); (b) No. 12 (1992); each 2.3 m (h) x 1.6 m (w); Tips software, gouache on colour laser copy paper on canvas with gold leaf. The series of works comprising MnemonicNotations refers to notions of place and memory, as well as the symbolic correspondences between the hliman body and the land. Reproduced with permission of the artist. basis of personal experiences. It was draw attention to this social process and SYSTEMEVOLUTION: through such rituals that song, dance, to the fact that the modern state had TIME AS AN IRREVERSIBLE and evolved. evolved with theatre, sculpture painting symbiotically the mechan- PROCESS As Merchant points out in her ground- istic view. Yet, he believed that despite Timeis a riverwhich sweeps me breaking work The Death of Nature, such their ideological collaboration, it was along, but I am the river;it is a which rituals, and the spiritual beliefs they tiger necessaryfor this reductiveprocess to destroysme, but I am the tiger;it is afire embody, act as normative constraints on have taken For it was in this place. way whichconsumes me, but I am thefire human activity [13]. In other words, if that we came to accept a mental disci- one believes that the earth is one's moth- pline which stimulatedour activitiesto -Jorge LuisBorges [17] er and that to a mine shaft is to tear such an extent as for them to become a dig of liberation;in other words,we her flesh and her certain process Fundamental to of open womb, rediscoverourselves in this process as any understanding ethical and spiritual observances must be being independent from God and all the organismic behaviour evident made. former ties, but that we must rediscover throughout nature is the recognition The of industrial in theseties on a higherplane, after we have, that time is an irreversible All of emergence society as it freed ourselves process. the West with its mecha- were, [14] [italics the natural structures that we in correspondingly mine]. perceive nistic approach to nature and culture the universe, from galaxies to snowflakes rapidly put a stop to such "superstitious" 'The expanded concept of art," "a new to human beings, have been brought and "irrational"behaviour. Beuys's famil- science of freedom": to Beuys these two into being through processes that occur iarity with scientific literature had made concepts were synonymous. Of course, in the forward flow of time. Such an him very much aware of how the institu- Beuys is not the only person to have observation may at first seem banal, but tionalization of scientific mechanism had expressed such ideas. As long ago as 1915, the irreversibility of natural processes undermined the cultural significance of a year before his untimely death, Franz has important implications for all mani- these earlier organismic beliefs. He recog- Marc made this comment: festations of life and evolution. nized this as a process that had led not The art to come will be giving form to Although it may seem somewhat only to increasing fragmentation in mod- our scientific convictions. ... It will be strange, both classical and quantum ern society, but to personal alienation, profound enough and substantial physics treat time as though it were both from nature and from the enough to generate the greatesttrans- reversible. The belief that time is a mere deeper formationthe worldhas everseen [15]. levels of our own experience. illusion has been a persistent one among Rather than turning his back on sci- Wassily Kandinsky expressed similar scientists until this century. Conse- ence, however, Beuys sought instead to views around the same time [16]. quently, past, present and future have

338 Lucas:Art, Science and Technology in an Expanded Field invariablyplayed the same role in the sci- the complexity of their own structures.In nistic subject/object framework was entists' equations. But such a description other words, the kinds of systems inadequate, simplistic and misleading. does not correspond with our everyday described by classicaldynamics are passive What he proposed instead was an experience. Nor does it correspond with to the forces that are intrinsic to their approach that sought to understand the the real evolution through time of most own nature or that are imposed on them way in which holistic, related systems natural phenomena. Science-fiction sto- from the environment. function and evolve. ries and modern recording devices may However, in biology and sociology, evo- As early as the 1930s, the quantum have made us familiar with the concept lution describes transformations or physicists Bernal, Schroedinger and of reversible time, but as far as the vast changes that lead to higher orders of Wigner had already come to the conclu- majority of natural systems is concerned, complexity. Biological and sociological sion "that life is a member of the class of time is never reversible. It may flow at an systems are not passive to the forces phenomena which are open or continu- almost infinite multiplicity of different intrinsic to or imposed upon them. Such ous systems able to decrease their inter- rates through different processes, but it systems are inherently dynamic and self- nal entropy at the expense of substances does, nevertheless, always flow in one modifying in response to changes in their or free energy taken in from the envi- direction-from past to future. environment [20]. They are not just act- ronment and subsequently rejected in a The concept of evolution obviously ed upon, they are themselves actors. degraded form" [22]. incorporates the notion that time is irre- These two scientific descriptions of evo- Von Bertalanffy, like Bernal, Schroe- versible. Yet, in the three scientific fields lution appear contradictory. On the one dinger and Wigner, insisted that what in which the concept first emerged, i.e. hand, we have increasing disorder in ther- we generally think of as "living"systems biology, physics and sociology, the word modynamics and, on the other, increas- are not closed, self-contained, mechani- "evolution" has had quite different ing order in biology and sociology. cal systems. They are essentially open to meanings. the environment and operate in a fun- In physics, the concept of the evolu- GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY damentally different manner from any tion of a kind of machine. In such (mechanical) physical system AND HIERARCHICAL open systems, was introduced by Sadi Carnot in 1824 entropy does not have to accumulate in ORGANIZATION but was later formalized in the 1850s by the system and increase until thermody- Rudolf Clausius as the Second Law of One of the first steps towards an integra- namic equilibrium is reached. Open sys- Thermodynamics. The Second Law states tion of these apparently contradictory tems have the ability to "export" their that all physical systems tend towards ther- ideas occurred in 1952, when Ludwig internal entropy back into the environ- modynamicequilibrium with their environ- von Bertalanffy published his first book, ment. Thus, entropy can remain at the ment. In other words, everything in the Problemsof Life [21]. It described a new same level, or even decrease in a living universe inevitably loses energy to the approach to understanding complex system. environment over time, until energetic natural and technological systems, Von Bertalanffy identified two funda- equilibrium with the environment is which he called General Systems mental principles of living nature: "hier- reached. At equilibrium, all processes, Theory. The book was an attempt to for- archical organization on the one hand, e.g. motion and heat exchange, come to mulate the beginnings of an integrated and the characteristics of open systems a standstill. According to Ludwig theory of order and organization in on the other" [23]. According to von Boltzmann's later conception of the both "animate"and "inanimate"nature. Bertalanffy, whether they be social or Second Law [18], the available energy in Von Bertalanffy felt that the mecha- economic systems of human society or the universe is inevitably running down; increasing entropy,or molecular disorder, is characteristic of all systems (entropy being a measure of the energy in a sys- tem that is no available for work). longer Fig.3. The Benard that the filmmaker and Jantsch reports instabilityis one novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet once example of a described his work as following this same, hydrodynamic disintegrative process [19], a fact that dissipative structure. underscores the wider influence of If a layer of liquid is heated from below, Boltzmann's pessimistic misconception. cooperative The central problem with the above behaviour occurs description is that it only holds true for beyond a critical tem- systems already at, or very close to, equi- perature gradient. librium with the environment. Examples Macroscopic convection streams of this range from crystals,machines and become dominant. experimental apparatuses (essentially Viewed from above, a structures)to our own solar equilibrium sys- pattern of regular bullet or mis- tem and the trajectoryof a hexagonal cells devel- sile on the surface of the earth. Both of ops. Reprinted with the latter are near-equilibriumsystems that permission from are passively shaped or acted upon by ErichJantsch [8] ' 1980, gravitationalfields. Systems at, or close to, Copyright Pergamon Press PLC. thermodynamic equilibrium cannot draw energy from the environment to increase

Lucas:Art, Science and Technology in an Expanded Field 339 the nervous and immune systems of level wholes and vice versa. In Hua Yen Possum Nungurraye's painting Bush insects, all systems display similar forms Buddhism, this radical vision of interde- TuckerDreaming (Fig. la and Color Plate of hierarchical organization and a pendence is imaged as the Jeweled Net A No. 2), a symbolic representation of dynamic openness to the external envi- of Indra, "a cosmic canopy where each women's work, is a beautiful example of ronment that provides these systems of us-each jewel at each node of the the Pintupi painters' genius. It is wom- with the energy, matter and information net-reflects all the others and reflects en's work to bring in food-wild bush to maintain that organization. the others reflecting back" [27]. fruits, berries, yams, beans, long beans, The word "hierarchical"as a descrip- Rather than using the analogy of an sweet flowers, emu eggs, bush banana, tion of the stratified organization appar- ancestral tree or a "Great Chain of quandongs, seeds and water. They also ent in nature has received some Being" as a "metamodel" for evolution collect feathers, fur and spinafex resin (a criticism, however, because it is rather as so many evolutionists have done in sticky black substance that sets hard-for misleading. When von Bertalanffy used the past, Gilles Deleuze and Felix making dance decorations and mending the term "hierarchical," he did not Guattari have insisted on the impor- cuts), ochres for body paint, substances mean a control hierarchy with orders tance of using an alternative organic for sand paintings (flowers, feathers, issuing from the top down, as in a mod- "map" when describing the holistic crushed spinafex grass), soft tussocks or ern corporation or feudal pyramid. interconnectedness of human and natu- lily roots and firewood. They must grind Rather, he was referring to the succes- ral processes. They feel that a more seed and make and cook damper and sive evolution through time of forms and appropriate descriptive model of the witchety grubs. Fig. lb provides a key to processes of increasing complexity,from multiplicitous connections that exist the painting. the relatively simple at the subatomic between different orders of nature is the The work of other contemporary level to the extremely complex interplay rhizome:"A rhizome is an underground artists such as Australian painter/pho- of processes apparent in human soci- sprout such as a bulb, not a root, but a tographer Phillip George are similarly eties and the earth's biosphere. stem. Its oldest parts die off in the same attempting to express an of nat- In von Bertalanffy's original systemic measure as it rejuvenates itself at the tip. ural order (Figs 2a, b) [29]. view, natural order was thought to be ... The rhizome continuously generates In contrast to classical scientific con- stratified in discrete, but interrelated, new relations . . . not copies, as the ceptions of organization, in a rhizome levels within levels within levels [24], a ancestral tree, but a map" [28]. there is no determining frame of refer- concept that bears similarities to Conway Many cultures throughout the world ence, no control issuing from a central and Liebniz's monadology and the con- seem to have recognized this and inte- power source. In the words of Deleuze cept of dialectics elaborated by Hegel. grated such organic maps into their and Guattari, "Any point on a rhizome Such natural forms of organization have mythology and art. Australian aboriginal can be connected with any other, and been called holarchical by Arthur paintings from the Balgo and Pintupi must be. This is very different to a tree Koestler [25] and hetrarchicalby Fritjof regions, for example, often utilize such or root, which fixes a point and thus an Capra [26]; they are wholes made up of rhizomatic maps as descriptions of the order" [30]. In reference to Deleuze and parts and are themselves parts of higher- physical/ landscape. Gabriella Guattari's work, Jantsch comments that the rhizome is "a self-organizing process system-like a dissipative structure, the gene pool of bacteria, an ecosystem or Fig. 4. The reactionis a chemical structure.In this Belousov-Zhabotinsky dissipative the Gaia [31]. He also reaction,malonic acid is oxidized bromatein the of iron ions. (Photo:Phillip system" suggests by presence that the three of ances- George,from video by AdamLucas, Alcheny in theLaboratory [1992].) organic images tral tree, root and connecting rhizome, taken together and applied according to their appropriate contexts, offer extremely useful descriptive analogies for what he calls time- and space-binding in evolution [32]. Deleuze and Guattari's insights also find parallels in the following quote from the physicist Ilya Prigogine. His idea of a scientific description of nature "does not presuppose any fundamental mode of description: each level of description is implied by another and implies the other. We need a multiplicity of levels that are all connected, none of which may have a claim to pre-emi- nence" [33]. These are, however, much more recent developments. Prigogine, Jantsch, Deleuze and Guattari have information at their disposal that von Bertalanffy cer- tainly did not. It was to take more than 20 years for von Bertalanffy's initial insights to gel into a more complex and

340 Lucas:Art, Science and Technology in an Expanded Field empirically testable theory of the characterized by maximum entropy and ing" matter and energy that is no longer dynamics of evolving systems. However, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. available for work. In this way, dissipative Deleuze and Guattari's insights into The other kind of chaos is "active, hot structures are capable of exhibiting three dynamic structuration are highly com- and energetic-a far-from-equilibrium special characteristics: self-regulation,self- patible with it. turbulent chaos" [36]. In the far-from- renewaland self-transcendence(i.e. the abili- equilibrium conditions typified by tur- ty to creatively overcome structural and bulent chaos, new forms of order behavioural limitations). The Second NON-EQUILIBRIUM SYSTEMS emerge and are maintained by a com- Law of is not contra- THEORY Thermodynamics plex of nonlinear processes. dicted by a system that behaves in this Thereis a region, midwaybetween the dis- Traditionally, Western scientists have way. chaos and the integration of sterility of dealt almost exclusively with natural pro- Some very special conditions are in which exists. infallibleorder, life cesses that display linear behaviour. required in order for dissipative struc- -Roland Penrose [34] Linear behaviour evolves gradually and tures to emerge. Certain boundarycondi- predictably along a single path. This tionsmust be met, i.e. the space in which A decisive breakthrough in these new path can be plotted using the differen- the reaction unfolds has to be over a cer- theories occurred in the late 1960s with tial calculus of Newton and Liebniz. tain critical size or volume. Usually, a cat- Prigogine's pioneering work on dissipa- Such a path could be the orbit of one of alytic agent must be present, i.e. a tive structuresin chemical reaction sys- the planets around the sun or the trajec- substance that aids or accelerates the tems. These dissipative chemical tory of a cannonball through the air. In reaction without itself undergoing a reactions are not "normal" in the sense a linear equation, there is always only change. And the system has to be pro- in which most of us are familiar. Until one "correct"solution. vided with a continuous influx of physi- the 1950s, they were poorly understood, Because of the enormous predictive cal or chemical energy above some if they were recognized at all. powers of such mathematics, classical critical value or threshold that will allow Some of these chemical reaction sys- science has focussed its attention on the reaction to begin and maintain tems, such as the Benard instability,show phenomena that demonstrate this kind itself. the emergence of hexagonal cells as the of linear behaviour. Even in those cases Let us take the human body as an solution reaches a critical temperature where simple, predictable behaviour example of a dissipative structure. The (Fig. 3). Others, such as the Belousov- cannot be demonstrated, many scientists body takes in sensory information, food, Zhabotinsky reaction, display the emer- still feel confident that linear equations oxygen and different types of energy, gence of coloured spiral formations or provide a useful approximation. But lin- such as heat and other forms of electro- concentric circles that become increas- ear equations describe only the simplest magnetic radiation from the environ- ingly complex over time (Fig. 4) [35]. and most regular phenomena that we ment. It excretes unusable matter, What is most interesting about dissipa- find in nature. energy and information back into the tive chemical reactions is that they display Over the last few decades, however, the environment in the form of various characteristics that normally we would study of chaotic and dissipative systems waste products. These waste products associate only with living things. Like liv- has revealed that most natural phenome- are, in turn, recycled by other organ- ing organisms, these reactions "import" na actually exist in far-from-equilibrium isms. Through these interactive process- energy from the external environment in conditions and exhibit nonlinear es, dissipative structures can maintain an order to maintain or increase their own behaviour. Even some simple systems incredible structural and behavioural internal organization, while "exporting" that normally show linear, predictable stability, despite the constant replace- unusable energy in the form of waste. behaviour, such as pendulums and plane- ment and reproduction of internal com- Because chemical dissipative structures taryorbitals, can be pushed into the non- ponents and fluctuating environmental like the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction linear domain. In this nonlinear domain, conditions. display life-like behaviour, it is possible a system has the ability to evolve along Such an observation leads us to the that through studying them, we can find more than one possible path of fact that dynamicstability is a ubiquitous unifying principles that not only underlie behaviour. Equations with morethan one feature of dissipative structures. On the the evolution of life, but that also show stable solution are required to model one hand, this is the ability of an organ- how "life" emerges from the so-called them. The number of possible paths the ism to resist environmental and internal "inanimate"world. system can take determines the complex- fluctuations through negative feedback Dissipative structures can only exist in ity of the probabilistic equation used to when such fluctuations threaten to over- conditions that are described by scien- describe it. Far-from-equilibriumprocess- whelm it. On the other hand, dynamic tists as nonlinearor far-from-equilibrium.In es are thus essentiallyunpredictable. stability allows an organism to amplify these kinds of turbulent, unstable, Dissipativestructures are a complex of some fluctuations through positivefeedback chaotic conditions, matter displays radi- far-from-equilibriumprocesses. Whether when some kind of change in structure cally different properties from those it be a hurricane, a chemical reaction or or behaviour is required. In those areas with which we are familiar from classical an ecosystem, it is far-from-equilibrium of behaviour in which a high degree of physics. In such conditions, matter and processes that enable these dissipativesys- flexibility and creativity is required (e.g. energy are able to self-organize. tems to organize their own behaviour social behaviour or food gathering), the As Prigogine points out, there are two and structure. Through such a complex organism remains highly sensitive to kinds of chaotic or disorderly behaviour of irreversibleprocesses, dissipativestruc- influx, close to a state of chaos. in nature, but only one of them gener- tures are able to continuously "import" In a dissipative organism, myriads of ates self-organization. The first kind of matter, energy and information from feedback loops are hooked together in chaos is that of thermodynamic equilib- other organisms and the external envi- such a way that its internal organization rium-the random mush of molecules ronment, while at the same time "export- can continuously adjust to the demands

Lucas:Art, Science and Technology in an Expanded Field 341 of its environment. Removal or damage "since even small fluctuations may grow When the organism is close to its stable of some part of the organism can be par- and change the overall structure ... indi- state, entropy production tends toward a tially or totally repaired by feedback pro- vidual activity is not doomed to failure" minimum. But, near the instabilityphase, cesses that replace or compensate for [40]. during the transition at which new struc- the lost or missing part. This is not some- The key to understanding how chaotic tures form, the organism's entropy pro- thing we see happening in a machine. and dissipative systems actually evolve duction increases significantly. lies in the of phenomenon bifurcation. In other words, the system doesn't When is ORDER THROUGH any dynamical system disrupted spare any expense for the creative to the extent that it is unable to maintain of a new structure ... as FLUCTUATION building up its original stable state, it reaches the first long as an inexhaustible reservoir of free is available in the environ- his studies of chemi- of a series of thresholds, or energy Through dissipative instability bifur- ment. an established cal reactions, discovered that cation and is forced to evolve in a Only system, going Prigogine points, for security, has to economize [46]. the ordering principle underlying the new direction [41]. The evolution of a dynamic stability of natural systems system from its stable state through these This principle holds for all dissipative could be understood as order throughfluc- bifurcation points can be mapped using systems, from spiral galaxial formations tuation. a bifurcation diagram (Fig. 5). The possi- through to the Belousov-Zhabotinsky A key to understanding this new order- ble paths of evolution that it represents reaction and all of the more conventional ing principle is the phenomenon of itera- resemble a "decision tree" with branch- manifestations of life and human culture. tion. Practically every process in nature ings at each instability threshold. Each , Humberto Maturana, involves some kind of iteration. Iteration branching represents two or more evolu- Ilya Prigogine and Francisco Varela have occurs whenever a process feeds some of tionary options or choices for the system: all pointed out in their work that this its own outputs back into itself as it "most of these choices lead to chaos, kind of behaviour, which represents rel- evolves over time. It is a form of dynamic some to order. The ones that lead to ative autonomy from the environment self-reference that involves "the constant order are stabilized by coupling itera- and the organism's capacity to "know" reabsorption or enfolding of what has tions, creating an interlocked net of what has to be imported and exported come before" [37]. It happens in scrol- feedback" [42]. This stabilization process to maintain and renew itself, can be ling weather systems, in predator-prey is known as autocatalysis or crosscatalysis understood as a primitive form of con- relationships, in the cycling replacement [43]. sciousness. This is true even at the level of cells in our own bodies and in the con- Although many futures could manifest of a dissipative chemical reaction. It stant process of creation and destruction themselves at each instability threshold, seems that each of the constituents is in of elementary particles from the vacuum only one actually does, and it is impossi- some sense "informed" about the posi- state. Even at the cosmic scale, this kind ble to predict which path the system will tion and activity of other parts of the sys- of iterative, attracting, self-organizing choose. In a situation in which the tem and that the whole can "remember" behaviour is apparent in galaxial forma- choice of paths has not been successful, the past stages of its own evolution and tions that are millions of light-years in the steps in the process that led to that make "intuitive,"creative choices about size and duration. state are not stabilized by autocatalysis or which evolutionary path it should take. In the nonlinear realm of most crosscatalysis.In such a situation, a dissi- behaviour, iteration still has the choice of dynamical systems' pative organism THE CREATIVE ROLE can amplify small disturbances, making retreating along the same path on which OF CHAOS both predictability and determinism it has already come. This is because it totally impossible. Such systems are seems to "remember" the initial condi- In stark contrast to the classical mechanis- "infinitely sensitive to the changing tions that made a particular develop- tic view, both chaos and nonequilibrium movement of everything else" [38]. This ment possible [44]. systems theory maintain that evolution is what is known in chaos theory as "sen- Sometimes the organism will enter a proceeds because of the increasing chaos sitive dependence on initial condi- chaotic regime and fluctuate erratically and disorder in the universe, not in spite tions"-the recognition that, in the right until either it begins to break up and dis- of them. In contrast to the modern ortho- circumstances, a butterfly flapping its solve into chaos or it is given another doxy of neo-Darwinism, chaos does not wings in Hong Kong can generate a "push"into orderly behaviour. But if the take freedom away from organisms by week of storm activity 3 weeks later in organism is pushed far enough away subjecting them to forces totally beyond New York. Such a recognition in the from its normal stable state and has their control. Instead, it can increase sphere of human activity has empower- enough environmental energy/matter/ their freedom, provide them with infor- ing ramifications for human agency. information at its disposal, it can evolve mation for potential behavioural modifi- In the words of Jantsch, "the role of into a higher state of complexity that is cations, and spontaneously generate new fluctuations renders the laws of large better able to survive in the new condi- and more complex forms of order. numbers invalid, giving a chance to the tions. This process is known as self-tran- As environmental or internal chaos individual and its creative imagination" scendenceand is manifest at all levels of increases, the necessity of an organism's [39]. This explains why, in the realm of dissipative self-organization. It involves a survival leads it to increasing complexity human culture, one person or a small break or flight from "business as usual" or, if it cannot cope, retrogressive be- group of people acting or applying pres- and is characterized by the spontaneous haviour or death. Although the processes sure in the right place at a sensitive time emergence of totally novel features in the that force evolutionary change may be can have a profound effect on the out- organism, i.e. features that had not previ- chaotic, the changes themselves are not. come of a particular situation or, more ously existed [45]. During this phase, an They occur in coherent, evolutionary importantly, on the evolution of wider organism's energy and resource utiliza- sequences that are probabilistic and, social relations. Prigogine comments that tion undergoes a marked change. therefore, unpredictable. But they are not

342 Lucas:Art, Science and Technology in an Expanded Field random as neo-Darwinists frequently claim. The indeterminate or probabilistic nature of an organism's relationship to the environment implies that it has rela- -~?c tive freedom in the behavioural options that are available to it at critical junc- tures. In the words of Briggs and Peat: The greater an organism'sautonomy, the more feedbackloops requiredboth :pytr?s'I withinthe systemand in its relationship to the environment. In other words, greater freedom implies greater con- nectednessto the environment [47]. f * . ) -, - . This of free- conception organismic :00., i!;: dom as relative to the complexity of the X:-:O;w -i . .. A<'^ processes that constitute it is again in stark contrast to the evolutionary views of neo-Darwinian nihilists, such as Jacques Monod and , who see "random" mutation and natural selec- tion as "objective constraints" that nar- row, if not totally abolish, the concept of individual freedom [48]. Perhaps one of the most inspiring things for artists about chaos and nonequilibrium systems theory is their of a fundamental in recognition creativity Fig. 5. in the evolutionof a structure.At each instabil- nature, and that it is chaos that Macroscopicindeterminacy dissipative generates ity threshold,there is choice amongtwo or more possibilities.If nonequilibrium,however, is this more it creativity.Perhaps accurately, diminishedagain, the structureretreats along the same path upon whichit has come, except could be stated that the response of dissi- for the so-called hysteresis effect that is due to the work invested in restructuration. The pative organisms to far-from-equilibrium structure "remembers" the initial conditions. Reprinted with permission from ErichJantsch chaos is to be creative in order to survive. [8] Copyright 1980, Pergamon Press PLC. An organism's creativity, its novel response to disorder, is drawn from the very source that threatens to overwhelm departure,even if it's only a speck of the margins of the art world and popu- it. Survival,creativity, freedom and chaos dust or a flash of light. This form begets lar culture. Some of its more obvious a series of one birth are thus intimately related at the instabili- things, thing giving manifestations during that time can be to anotherthing [49]. ty threshold of evolving systems. As long seen in music and performance with as the organism's limitations do not force Although the Dada and surrealist such groups as the Sex Pistols, Survival it to retreat along its own evolutionary movements were possibly paradigmatic Research Laboratories, Cabaret path, the greater the disorder imposed of such chaotic explorations, numerous Voltaire, COUM Transmissions and the on it, the greater its freedom of behav- artists have drawn inspiration from Temple of Psychic Youth [50]. The per- ioural choice. Evolutionary order thus chaotic phenomena. Leonardo himself formance work of Survival Research emerges from an infinite sea of disorder is often quoted as deriving inspiration Laboratories in particular is a radical (or "order of an infinite degree," in from the various stains on his studio's critique of industrial culture and the Bohm's words), a chaotic matrix that walls or from clouds in the sky. Com- everyday violence to which we regularly holds within itself infinite potentiality. posers John Cage, Steve Reich and subject ourselves (Color Plate B No. 3). Such an insight recalls the Babylonian Karlheinz Stockhausen all explored ele- Western patriarchal society is, howev- myth of Tiamat, the primordial feminine ments of chance, spontaneity and natu- er, not overly tolerant of such anarchis- Chaos, from which all creation proceeds. ral order in their music. In the 1950s tic tendencies and often attempts to The scientific recognition that chaos and 1960s, loose-knit political art move- marginalize or denigrate artists (and or disorder is responsible for sponta- ments such as COBRA, the Lettrist and other individuals) who display such sym- neously generating new order has long Situationist International and FLUXUS pathies. Chaos has been socially con- been recognized intuitively by artists, a explored notions of spontaneity and structed as a destructive threat, rather point that is illustrated quite succinctly free play as means of liberating the indi- than a creative force, and has, there- in this quote from Mir6: vidual's latent creative potentialities. fore, had a dead weight of negative This was seen as the first stage of a pro- moral baggage attached to it. I begin my picturesunder the effect of a cess that would ultimately lead to the lib- This observation leads us to the fact shock ... which makesme escape from eration of collective possibilities in a new that, complementary to the radical cre- The causeof this shock be a reality. may form of In the 1970s and 1980s, nature and human thread out of the canvas,a society. ativity permeating tiny sticking most of this kind of seemed to culture are conservative "rules of the drop of waterfalling, this printmade by activity my finger on the shiningsurface of this have gone "underground," or at least to game" that limit and structure the table. In any case, I need a point of have been reduced to explorations at behaviour of dissipative organisms.

Lucas:Art, Science and Technologyin an ExpandedField 343 Social conservatism is just one example and economic processes-a situation 600 river red gum trees in the installa- of how such rules can operate. Although that led to a radical transformation of tion had been allowed to grow to maturi- these rules may themselves evolve, for human society. ty, the geometric configuration of the those organisms that make inappropri- In the complex interplay of social pro- tree planting would have broken down ate choices or that are pushed too far cesses, artists play an important role to be replaced by an organic order [52]. from their stable state to reorganize either in perpetuating conservative Cranswick already has sponsorship for themselves, stagnation or disintegration modes of artistic practise that support materials from 3M Corporation and was will inevitably result. On the other hand, the status quo or in exploring hybrids of donated the trees for his installation by successful and well-timed choices can be new and traditional modes and thus the Australian corporation BHP. In addi- quickly amplified and integrated into an expanding our perception of the indi- tion, at the time of this writing, plans are organism's behaviour as a new "habit." vidual and society. John Stewart suggests in place for the mass-production of This is especially true with regard to the that "one of the functions of art may be hand-drawn and computer-generated evolution of human values, and, if to render us truly conscious that reality images of Cranswick's piece for place- Sheldrake's theory of formative causa- is wonderfully and mysteriously more mats in McDonald's restaurants through- tion is correct, current social movements rich and complex than we are led to out Western Sydney as an advertisement and the values that they embody will believe on the basis of any finite set of for Perspecta! Where do we draw the quicken the pace of social change perceptual modes" [51]. line between collaboration, appropria- through morphic resonance. This Individuals working through internal tion and subversion? means that the potential to make similar pressure groups or unions within institu- There are rich underground tribu- value changes will increase exponentially tions who surreptitiously make sugges- taries of history and culture for artists to as the human population rapidly tions for subtle changes can be effective. draw upon in the search for an organis- becomes more attuned to such shifts in But, given the exponential growth of mic, interdisciplinary artistic language. thinking. global conservatism over the last 5 Never mind how strange or contradicto- decades, guerilla tactics-e.g. developing ry it may at first seem. It is a voyage of alternative communication networks and discovery. Anyone can participate. CONCLUSION organizing with like-minded individuals, organizations and community groups to The social and political implications of appropriate or create media and public Acknowledgments the new of conferences and information out- paradigm self-organization events, I thank Phillip George for his photography and D. are extremely radical. If all of nature is lets for applying political pressure in sen- Brynn Hibbert and the Department of Analytical and sitive areas-seem more Chemistry, University of New South Wales, for the constantly transforming, renewing appropriate. use of the facilities for documenting the Belousov- recreating itself and equilibrium is the Similar strategies have proven most effec- Zhabotinsky reaction. I also thank Pergamon Press equivalent of stagnation and death, we tive for the Establishment Right and the for permission to reproduce images from Erich have an under- Extreme so not use their own Jantsch's The Self-Organizing Universe; Cooee open-ended conceptual Right, why Aboriginal Art for permission to reproduce Gabriella standing for the continual transforma- tactics against them? Possum Nungurraye's work; and the artists David tion of human society. But rather than Emerging concepts in art and science Cranswick, Lesley Gladsjo and Survival Research Laboratories for permission to reproduce their work. providing all the answers, or even have much more than historical precur- in attempting to do so, this new organismic sors common. They also share certain References and Notes philosophy problematizes many areas of ways of seeing. For this reason, art and human life, especially those areas that science have the potential to cross-polli- 1. Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic touch work and sin- nate and form a that can act as a of Enlightenment,John Cumming, trans. (London: upon creativity. My hybrid Verso, 1986). cere hope is that the new science will powerful catalyst for social, political and to a and authorita- economic The more artists 2. See Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and help provide unifying change. Science (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale Univ. tive framework within which a diverse cooperate and organize with other cre- Press, 1985); George R. Lucas, The Rehabilitation of of current social movements ative individuals and to Whitehead (Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York range organizations The Death Nature: at the amelioration of social and these new and val- Press, 1989); Carolyn Merchant, of (aimed explore perspectives Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (San racial inequalities) can implement the ues in a publicly accessible and participa- Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980); Betty Jo Teeter The Foundations Newton's or "The initiatives for new solutions that are cur- tory way, the more consumer Dobbs, of Alchemy capitalism Hunting of the Greene Lyon" (Cambridge: Cambridge rently required. will respect and recognize the need to Univ. Press, 1975). The of accessible these new values for its own emergence easily appropriate 3. The increasing association of alchemical, vitalistic video, computer and other communica- economic survival. and romantic ideas with "irrational" and "unscientif- tions technologies means that the ability A recent example of large corpora- ic" forms of thinking in the twentieth century (wit- of and individuals tions' to embrace environ- ness the derogatory common usage of the word marginalized groups willingness "romantic") could be attributed to three major his- to have their voices heard becomes mental concerns involved a sculptor torical processes: (1) the successes of the mechanis- The friend, David Cranswick, who tic approach to biology and to evolutionary theory, increasingly possible. widespread recently the of modernist such as creation and distribution of alternative an outdoor installation titled (2) emergence theories, completed existentialism and phenomenology, as humanistic forms of information is already under- Constructing Nature for the 1991 Austra- alternatives to scientific materialism, and (3) an assault on vitalist and in mining the current of an lian Perspecta, involving lasers, reflective organized religious concepts hegemony science onl the part of groups such as Helmholtz's oppressive and intensely patriarchal materials, solar-powered lights, a sensor School of Medicine in the late nineteenth century mode of thinking. We are in a situation and 600 river red gum trees (Color Plate (in which Freud was a participant) and the Logical Positivists in the 1930s arnd 1940s. that is comparable to the sixteenth and A No. 1). This piece draws attention to seventeenth centuries, when the print- the way in which Western culture 4. This is not the same thing as saying that perception made it for the disen- to a order constructs a totally "fictive" internal world that is an ing press possible attempts impose particular arbitrary representation of the external world, as franchised to assert their role in political upon our natural environment. If the some deconstructionists claim. See Humberto R.

344 Lucas: Art, Science anld Technology in an Expanded Field Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, The Tree of 14. Gotz Adriani and Thomas M. Messer, Joseph 35. For a discussion of the order shown in the Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Under- Beuys:Drawings Objectsand Prints (Stuttgart: Institute Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, see Mae-Wan Ho, vstanding (Boston: Shambhala, 1987); John Stewart, for Foreign Cultural Relations, 1989) p. 12. "Reanimating Nature: The Integration of Science "Can Science Be an Art? Epistemology as the Vehicle with Human Experience," Leonardo25, No. 5, pp. 15. Franz in for a Trip from Science to Art and Back,"Leonardo 22, Marc, "Aphorisms, 1914-1915," Chipp 607-615 (1991). No. 2, 255-261 (1989); Heinz Von Foerster, "The [11] p. 436. Need of for the of Needs," 36. Briggs and Peat [33] p. 139. Perception Perception 16. [11] 152-170. See Claus, Leonardo22, No. 2, 223-226 (1989). Chipp pp. alsoiJurgen "The Cosmic and the Digital Code," Leonardo24, 37. Briggs and Peat [33] p. 136. No. 119-121 5. Antonin Artaud, Oeuvres completes (Paris: 2, (1991). 38. Briggs and Peat [33] p. 74. Gallimard, 1967) pp. vii, 24. 17.Jorge Luis Borges, quoted inJantsch [8] p. 19. 39.Jantsch [8] p. 8. 6. See G.W. Hegel, Hegel'sScience of Logic,A.V. Miller 18. Ludwig Boltzmann, Theoretical Physics and (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969). 40. and Peat 151. PhilosophicalProblems: Selected Writings (Dordrecht/ Briggs [33] p. 7. the central tenet of evo- Boston: Reidel Pub. Co., 1974). Although Hegel rejected 41. The realization that life and instability are inti- i.e. a flux and transforma- lution, temporal gradual 19. See 286f. on to mately connected was, interestingly enough, noted tion of form in his focus on Jantsch [8] p. Jantsch goes nature, philosophical correct by the artist and critic Jean Metzinger in an article the rise and variation of forms of self-consciousness explain: "[Robbe-Grillet's] intuitively went in details since . . . self- on Picasso's Cubist perspective in the Parisian maga- in the historical not was indebt- attempt astray many process only deeply cannot be in terms zine Pan in 1910: "Form, used for too many cen- ed to the evolutionists and but fur- organization dynamics explained early Romantics, of the older notions of turies as the inanimate support of color finally in some at the radical equilibrium thermodynamics thered, respects least, political . . the idea of is central for the recovers its right to life and to instability" (from of the alchemists and self-organization agenda early evolutionists, roman nouveau." Chipp [11] p. 196). An artistic insight is, however, with to influence on the especially regards Hegel's scientifically useless unless it can be backed up by Karl Marx and the Situationist Debord. young Guy 20. For a detailed discussion of these issues, see Ilya empirical evidence. It was more than 50 years after and Isabelle Orderout Chaos: observation that scientific evidence for 8. See Erich The Universe: Prigogine Stengers, of Metzinger's Jantsch, Self-Organizing Man's New with Nature (New York: Bantam, this connection was discovered. and Human the Dialogue Scientific Implications of Emerging 1984). See also Gleick, Chaos: a New Evolution James Making Paradigm of (Oxford: Pergamon Press, Science(London: 1988); and 42. Briggs and Peat [33] p. 143. and The Presence the Past Penguin, 1980); Rupert Sheldrake, of F. David Peat, Science,Order and (New York: York:Random Creativity 43. means that "certain molecules (New House, 1988). Bantam, 1987); and Fox Keller, on Autocatalysis par- Evelyn Reflections in reactions in which are for Genderand Science (New Haven, CT, and London: ticipate they necessary 9. The most convincing evidence for organismic the formation of molecules of their own kind." Cross- behaviour at the level surrounds the Yale Univ. Press, 1985). quantum catalysis means that certain molecules participate in of most of inconsistency interpretations quantum 21. Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Problems of Life: An reactions in which they are necessary for "the forma- in relation to the Einstein- theory, particularly Evaluation of Modern Biological Thought (London: tion of molecules of an intermediate kind and subse- Podolsky-Rosen thought-experiment, empirically Watts, 1952). quently of their own kind."FromJantsch [8] p. 31. tested in a systematic way for the first time by Alain Aspect and his research team in France in 1981. The 22. , Gaia:A New Lookat Life on Earth 44. As has already been discussed, self-organizing experiment shows that either classical science's com- (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979) p. 4. systems possess a memory of their past states. monsense notion of objective reality or the funda- Although these systems are not conscious in the von General mental notion of locality must be abandoned. 23. Ludwig Bertalanffy, SystemsTheory sense that we understand it, they have the ability to 12. "Locality"means that events and objects that have a (London: Penguin, 1969) p. store certain types of information. For example, they distinct existence (in three dimen- can and other like spatio-temporal 24. It should be that "level" of recognize food, danger systems cannot or with one emphasised any themselves without to be sions) "signal," communicate, should be as the level of the needing directly "taught" another faster than the of description recognized other individuals. can also learn from their speed light. Aspect's observer's rather than hard and fast by They showed that information was attention, any own The orthodox view is that this experiment being demarcation between different structures and experience. transferred between such "distinct" pro- information is in quantum phe- cesses. "programmed" deoxyribonucleic nomena at faster-than-light speed, implying that acid (DNA) or stored in the brain. But even dissipa- is "seamless"at some level that is nor- tive chemical reactions a form of reality beyond 25. Arthur Koestler, Janus: A SummingUp (London: display primitive mal perception and the scope of orthodox physical Fontana, 1984). systems memory, and they have neither brains nor theories and that cooperative systemic behavior is in DNA. For a detailed discussion of these issues, see evidence even at the quantum level. David Bohm's 26. , The Turning Point (New York: Sheldrake [8]. theory of the "implicate order" is a convincing Simon & Schuster, 1982). 45. "Close to the threshold the attempt to come to grips with this phenomenon. instability marking 27. Joanna Macy, 'The Ecological Self: Postmodern transition from one structure to another, the model 10. According to Sheldrake, 'This memory doesn't Ground for Right Action," in SacredInterconnections: breaks down. In this phase, it is not the general just get stored in the chemical genes, as conventional PostmodernSpirituality, Political Economy and Art(Albany, which is of decisive importance, but the particular- biology assumes, but rather depends on a direct con- NY:State Univ. of New YorkPress, 1990) p. 43. in short, the creative." See Jantsch [8] p. 56. nection by... morphic resonance, through space and Although the older model may break down at the time. So it's as if organisms 'tune in' to all previous 28.Jantsch [8] p. 234. transition stage, and prediction of what kind of of the more similar and the it entails is not organisms species (the something 29. For another of change relationships possi- is to that's the example Phillip George's work, once these factors are known at their new val- something happened before, greater with his discussion of see Roberts-Goodwin ble, the and in turn contribute to the collective it, Lynn it is to construct a new model resonance) and Users' ues, possible and, This memory is cumulative ... and Phillip George, "Computer Report," to whether these will memory. happens Leonardo26, No. 1 (1993). consequently, predict changes independently of conventional forms of connection or dominate the overall system in the new circum- communication.... David Bohm thinks that morphic 30. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, On the Line stances. resonance would work that have by things happened (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983) pp. 10-11. "There into the which is 46.Jantsch [8] p. 50. going implicate order, beyond space are no points or positions in a rhizome, as one finds and and then folded back into the time, getting world, in a structure, tree or root. There are only lines" (p. 47. and Peat 144. into the order.... Some like the idea Briggs [33] p. explicate people 10). Lines of segmentation, lines of flow, lines of of extra dimensions. Others think of a kind of mor- rupture and of flight, "these three lines are imma- 48. See Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity(New ether. All these are different models. No doubt phic nent and caught up in each other. ... A rhizome York:Knopf, 1972); and Richard Dawkins, The Selfish more can be But as far as this many suggested. theory can be cracked and broken at any point: it starts off Gene(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1976). is it doesn't matter which model have concerned, you again following one or another of its lines, or even of the The is the of the 49. From travaille commeun in process. key thing investigation other lines. We can never get rid of ants, because Je jardinier, quoted idea that this does an inter- Penrose 171. process happen." (From they form an animal rhizome that never ceases to [34] p. view with Sheldrake Adam Lucas and Rupert by reconstitute itself, even when almost completely Andrew for radio station in 50. See V. Vale and A. Culture Nethery 2SER-FM, Sydney, destroyed" (p. 71). Juno, eds., Industrial Australia.) Handbook(San Francisco: Re/Search, 1984). 31.Jantsch [8] p. 234. 11. Herschel B. Chipp, ed., Theoriesof Modern Art 51. John Stewart, "Can Science Be an Art? Epis- 231-238. (London: Univ. of Press, 1968) pp. 32.Jantsch [8] pp. temology as the Vehicle for a Trip from Science to 155-157. Art and Back," Leonardo22, No. 2 (1989) 255. 33. Quoted in Briggs and Peat, TurbulentMirror: An p. Illustrated Guide to Chaos Theory and the Science of 12. Rainer Statchelhaus, (New York: 52. For a detailed discussion of Cranswick's Joseph Beuys Wholeness(New York:Harper & Row, 1989) p. 149. piece, Abbeville Press, 1991) p. 64. with his discussion of it, see David Cranswick, "Red 34. Roland Penrose, Miro (London: Thames and Gum/Red Light," Artlink 11, No. 4 (Summer 13. See Merchant [2]. Hudson, 1985) p. 198. 1991-1992) p. 80.

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