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ENTROPY

AND

CHANCE

Ardi Makki Pantow Gunawan

Monash University

Faculty of Art and Design

Exegesis documentation submitted for the degree of Master of Fine Art

July 2009



Synopsis

Through an investigation of the concepts of entropy and chance, this

exegesis explores the methodological practice of two distinct

artists: sculptor and writer Robert Smithson, and

composer/musician/poet John Cage. The practices of these artists are

intertwined insofar as their work gives prominence to the question of

process in art’s production. Throughout the exegesis I explore how

entropy and chance are related to the questions of material formation

and making activities, physicality, forces and event. And I

demonstrate how entropy and chance are active conditions in the

operations of three-dimensional artwork. This exploration situates

the discussion of my practice, which I regard as coming from the

tradition of sculpture. It is through this practice that I

investigate various ways of rethinking the relations between

sculpture and embodiment; sculpture and forces; sculpture and event;

and sculpture and its material performance.



CONTENTS

Original signed statement……………………………………………………………………………v

Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………………………………vi

List of Figures………………………………………………………………………………………………………vii

Figures……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………xii

INTRODUCTION: ENTROPY AND

CHANCE…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………1

Entropy and chance in the context of Process Art

Contextualizing Robert Smithson and John Cage

Utilizing entropy and chance

Formulating entropy and chance

CHAPTER ONE

NOTES ON SCULPTURE……………………………………………………………………………14

The physicality of sculpture

The theatricality of encountering sculpture

CHAPTER TWO

ENTROPY: SMITHSON………………………………………………………………………………20

Buried architecture

Propping

Matter-pour

Displacement

CHAPTER THREE

CHANCE: CAGE…………………………………………………………………………………………………41

Throw…chance

Irregularity

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………………………………54

Sculpture and embodiment

Sculpture and forces



Sculpture and event

Sculpture and its material performance

APPENDIX…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………59

Proposal for Walking Exercise: Material Constellation

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………………………… 67



Original signed statement

The documentation contains no material which has been accepted for

the award of any other degree or diploma in any university, and that

to the best of the candidate’s knowledge and belief, the

documentation contains no material previously published or written by

another person, except when due reference is made in the text of the

documentation.



Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor Terri Bird for her continued

support, and her assistance in the development of this exegesis.

Thanks also to Bianca Hester and Michael Farrell for their feedback

on the text.

A number of colleagues, friends, and collaborators who have played a

part in working out the ideas presented here, including Domenico

Declario, Leslie Eastman, Tamsin Green, Susan Jacobs, Fiona

MacDonald, Spiros Panigirakis, and Keith Wong. Thanks also to my

parents Jimmy Makki Gunawan and Lingkan Pantow for their emotional

support.

This exegesis is dedicated to Bianca, Michael, Terri, and Tamsin.



List of Figures

Figure 1: Robert Smithson, Partially Buried Woodshed , 1970 in R.

Hobbs, Robert Smithson: Sculpture (Ithaca, Cornell University Press,

1981) 189.

Figure 2: Ardi Gunawan, Reconfiguring still: proposals for the super

light, 2008. A bicycle (found), wooden pallet (found), plasterboards

(found on site from existing exhibition), pinewoods (found on site),

chairs (found), table draw (found), metal trestle leg (found), MDF

and plywood boards (debris from previous exhibition), trolley

(found), window glass (found), 10L can of paint (found on site),

water bottles, etc., height 167cm. Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces,

Melbourne.

Figure 3: Robert Smithson, Partially Buried Woodshed [central beam

cracked], 1970 in R. Hobbs, Robert Smithson: Sculpture (Ithaca,

Cornell University Press, 1981) 190.

Figure 4: I Ching table of random numbers, in R. Wilhelm and C F.

Baynes, The I Ching, or, Book of Changes: the Richard Wilhelm

Translation, 3

rd

ed. (London, Melbourne, Routledge & Kegan Paul,1968) 741.

Figure 5: John Cage, Water Music, 1952 in P. Schimmel, Out Of

Actions: Between Performance And The Object 1949-1979 (Los Angeles,

The Museum of Contemporary Art New York, Thames and Hudson, 1998) 22.

Figure 6: Richard Serra, Verb List, 1967-68 in Richard Serra,

Writings, Interviews (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994) 3-

4.

Figure 7: Anthony Caro, Praire, 1967 in A. Potts, The Sculptural

Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist (New Haven, Yale

University Press, 2000) 183.

Figure 8: John Cage greets his friend with kisses during the

performance of SPEECH , written in 1955, performed in 1982.




light, 2008. A bicycle (found), wooden pallet (found), plasterboards

(found on site from existing exhibition), pinewoods (found on site),

chairs (found), table draw (found), metal trestle leg (found), MDF

and plywood boards (found debris from previous exhibition), trolley(found), window glass (found), 10L can of paint (found on site),

water bottles, etc., height 167cm. Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces,

Melbourne.

Figure 10: Richard Serra, Circuit, 1972 in A. Potts, The Sculptural

Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist (New Haven, Yale

University Press, 2000) 216.

Figure 11: Richard Serra, Circuit [detail], 1986 in A. Potts, The

Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist (New Haven,

Yale University Press, 2000) 217.

Figure 12: Robert Smithson, Asphalt Rundown, 1969 in J. Flam ed.,

Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings (Berkeley, University of

California Press, 1996) 306.


light [studio view], 2007. A bicycle, 2 institutional chairs, plastic

bin, MDF, wooden off-cuts, 2 table draws, and other materials found

around the studio, approx. 142cm in height. Monash University,

Melbourne.


light [early stages], 2008. A bicycle (found), lengths of timber

(found on site), a pallet (found), height 144cm. Gertrude

Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne.

Figure 15: Ardi Gunawan and Susan Jacobs, plaiting; actions, weed

displacement, clearing , 2009. Weeds. Anstey and Ashton, West

Brunswick, Melbourne.

Figure 16: Ardi Gunawan and Susan Jacobs, weight propped up with 3

concrete discs; actions, weed displacement, clearing , 2009. Grass,

wood beams, dirt, rusted corrugated steel, rocks, gravel stones,

approx. height 153cm. Anstey and Ashton, West Brunswick, Melbourne.



Figure 17: Ardi Gunawan and Susan Jacobs, residue of clearing;

actions, weed displacement, clearing , 2009. Black soil, weeds, and a

concrete roller, variable dimensions. Anstey and Ashton, West

Brunswick, Melbourne.

Figure 18: Richard Serra, installation of Lead Props, 1969 in R.

Krauss, Richard Serra: Sculpture, ed. L. Rosenstock (New York, Museum

of Modern Art, 1986) 70.

Figure 19: Richard Serra, installation of Lead Props, 1969 in R.

Krauss, Richard Serra: Sculpture, ed. L. Rosenstock (New York, Museum

of Modern Art, 1986) 71.

Figure 20: Richard Serra, Corner Prop, 1969 in R. Krauss, Richard

Serra: Sculpture, ed. L. Rosenstock (New York, Museum of Modern Art,

1986) 74.

Figure 21: Ardi Gunawan, untitled-construction, 2007. Found office

furniture, approx. 202cm in height. BUS gallery, Melbourne.

Figure 22: Ardi Gunawan, following piece in 3 parts as installed at

Firstdraft gallery, Sydney, in 2007.

Figure 23: Ardi Gunawan, layout of photo-pamphlet; following piece in

3 parts, 2007.

Figure 24: Ardi Gunawan, photo-pamphlets as installed at Firstdraft

gallery, Sydney, in 2007.

Figure 25: Ardi Gunawan, repeated acts for following piece in 3 parts

(studio view), 2007. Found objects, height approx. 192cm. Monash

University, Melbourne.

Figure 26: Ardi Gunawan, a still image from following piece in 3

parts, 2007.

Figure 27: Robert Smithson, stills from Spiral Jetty , 1970 in J. Flam

ed., Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings (Berkeley, University of

California Press, 1996) 140-141.



Figure 28: Robert Smithson, photographic documentations of Spiral

Jetty , 1970 in J. Flam ed., Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings

(Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996) 144. All photos are

by Gianfranco Gorgoni.

Figure 29: Ardi Gunawan, installation of pamphlet pile (front) and

the earlier version of untitled-construction (back). Variable

dimensions. Monash University, Melbourne, 2006.

Figure 30: Ardi Gunawan, detail of pamphlet pile, 2006. Over 1300

black and white photocopy papers, approx. 70 x 210 x 450cm. Monash

University, Melbourne.

Figure 31: Ardi Gunawan, installation of collage collapse with

fluorescent lights by Domenico Declario, 2008. Fluorescent lights;

each tube is covered with a cellophane sheet. MDF, tables, and other

found institutional items. Studio 9, Gertrude Contemporary Art

Spaces, Melbourne.


fluorescent lights by Domenico Declario, 2008. Fluorescent lights;

each tube covered with a cellophane sheet. MDF, tables, and other

found institutional items. Studio 9, Gertrude Contemporary Art

Spaces, Melbourne.


fluorescent light works by Domenico Declario, 2008. Fluorescent

lights; each tube is covered with a cellophane sheet. MDF, tables,

and other found institutional items. Studio 9, Gertrude Contemporary

Art Spaces, Melbourne.

Figure 34: Bianca Hester and Ardi Gunawan, THROW , 2008. Various

lengths and thicknesses of wooden stick. Meat Market, Melbourne.

Figure 35: Bianca Hester and Ardi Gunawan, THROW [detail], 2008.

Various lengths and thicknesses of wooden stick. Meat Market,

Melbourne.

Figure 36: John Cage, Writing Through Finnegans Wake For The Second

Time, 1977 in R. Kostelanetz ed., Writings About John Cage (AnnArbor, University of Michigan Press, 1993) 216.



Figure 37: Ardi Gunawan, stills from Time-racing , 2009, BUS gallery,

Melbourne.



Figures:





INTRODUCTION: ENTROPY AND CHANCE

This exegesis explores the notion of entropy as a working program and

chance as an experimental system. This exploration, through the work

of Robert Smithson and John Cage respectively, provides the context

for considering my practice, which I regard as developing out of the

tradition of sculpture. My engagement with the tradition of sculpture

emphasizes the relations of sculpture to process and material

performance. This will be examined in the context of a focus on the

temporality of entropy and chance, as discussed in Chapter Two.

I argue that the understanding of entropy developed by Smithson is

useful for the practice of sculpture understood as a context in which

things, mass, or weight are deposited, displaced or distributed. Even

though sculpture involves a wide range of practices that have changed

over time, I argue the central concern of sculptural practices has

been the search for a greater understanding of corporeality and

materiality. As the art theorist Alex Potts has written,

A consideration of sculpture gives particular

prominence to the materiality of the artwork and

to the viewer’s more embodied, potentially

tactile engagement with things and environments.1

Potts makes clear that the bodily aspects of the materiality of

sculpture are inevitable, and as I elaborate, this materiality is

affected in many ways by the temporal condition concurrent with

entropy through chance. These conditions demand the question, is

sculpture built against or with entropy. It is in this sense that Iargue entropy can be considered as a working program for the practice

of sculpture. How a sculptural work responds to entropy is a central

question underpinning my work and is particularly evident in

Reconfiguring still: proposals for the super light, 2008, exhibited

at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne. This work is a key

1Potts, “Introduction: the Idea of Modern Sculpture,” in A Modern Sculpture Reader ,

ed. John Wood, David Hulks & Alex Potts (Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, 2007), xiv.

This idea by Potts owes a particular debt to Anne Wagner’s discussion of Henry Moore’s

sculptures. See Anne Wagner, Mother Stone: The Vitality of Modern British Sculpture

(New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2005).



project in my exegesis as it brings together elements of chance and

entropy. It is discussed in detail in Chapter Two in terms of the

gradual increase in the physicality of this work, and again in

Chapter Three, in terms of chance.

Although Cage does not use the word ‘chance’ in reference to the

generation of his musical forms, I explore the manner in which chance

nonetheless operates in his compositions. Chance as an experimental

system is one of the decision-making procedures employed by Cage,

particularly through the method of throwing devised for the practice

of the I Ching . Compositions such as Theater Piece No. 1 and Writings

Through Finnegans Wake for the Third Time, discussed in Chapter

Three, can be considered as a direct result of the use of chance

given that the composition results from the throw of coins, as in the

I Ching .

The purposeful use of chance by Cage as a method of composing his

musical forms, and the theorization and exploration of entropy by

Smithson provide both physical and temporal understandings to what is

integral in the materialization of my work. For example, my work,

Reconfiguring still: proposal for the super light, utilized a working

process to built a form involving propping, stacking, and wedging

different weights of material. It can be argued that, on the one

hand, the resulting order of this assemblage is configured by chance

events. On the other hand, the effect of entropy is at work during

the process of forming and particularly after it had concluded. In

addition, the future of the work’s total collapse would become

another chance event.

The temporal duration of entropic processes operates according to the

gradual release of energy, whereas chance operates with an

unpredictable temporality. The gradual increase of entropy in a

material system proceeds forward in time, although at a different

duration; such that when entropy increases, energy decreases. This

irreversibility of entropy and its temporal trajectory, resulting in

material deformation, is linked to the other model of temporality

examined in this exegesis that of chance. For example, in Smithson’s

Partially Buried Woodshed, 1970 [Fig. 1], the potential collapse of

the work is always present, as will be discussed in detail in Chapter

Two. Chance events play a part in the production of this work as theavailable energy in the object becoming diffused, that is, it falls.



As I will discuss in a following section “Utilizing entropy and

chance,” there is a potential for a fall to takes place when there is

a diffusion of energy, however the timing of this is dependent on

many factors and it is here that chance plays a part.

Whilst this exegesis is primarily focused on an examination of

entropy and chance, specifically in relation to the practices of

Smithson and Cage, and where appropriate my work, I will initially

explore the importance of sculpture in my practice in Chapter One.

Drawing on arguments presented by Potts in the Sculptural

Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist, 2000, and Michael

Fried in his essay, “Art and Objecthood,” first published in Artforum

in 1967, I situate the practices I examine in the context of the

physicality and theatricality of sculpture. It is through the term of

theatricality that Minimalism relates to this research in terms of

its activation of a corporeal understanding of mass, weight, scale

and volume in the art object. It is through the activation of

physicality of sculpture, together with a discussion of differing

temporalities of chance and entropy, that I explore various ways of

rethinking the relations between sculpture and embodiment; sculpture

and forces; sculpture and event; and sculpture and its material

performance. These relations are the forces at play in my practice,

and it is the rethinking of these relations that this exegesis will

elaborate via a discussion of my practice.

Entropy and chance in the context of Process Art

Entropy and chance, understood as methodologies, have a strong

connection to the history of Process Art, particularly in terms of

the temporality at play in many Process Art works. The term ‘Process

Art’ refers largely to sculptural and installation-based practicesfrom the late sixties and seventies. They are typically associated

with the work of Eva Hesse, Richard Serra, Robert Morris, Bruce

Nauman, Barry Le Va, Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, and many

others.2 Drawing on work made by the process-oriented sculptors of

the sixties, Pamela M. Lee investigates what she describes as, “a

kind of rethinking of the relationship between the hand and materials

2Pamela M. Lee, “Some Kinds of Duration: the Temporality of Drawing as Process Art,”

in Cornelia H. Butler, Afterimage: Drawing through Process (Cambridge: MIT Press,

1999), 26.



and the status of form.”3 Lee also argues for a convergence in the

manner process-oriented sculptures holds on to their form whilst

acknowledging the partiality (or the incomplete-ness) of matter.4 It

is this tension between form and formlessness, complete and

incompleteness that I am to activate through my various projects,discussed throughout this exegesis.

Of the artists associated with Process Art, Robert Morris’ reading of

Jackson Pollock’s gestural painting is of particular interest in

terms of locating a central ‘moment’ in process-orientated works that

inform my practice. Morris focuses on Pollock’s use of a stick to

drip paint, noting it, “acknowledges the nature of fluidity of

paint.”5 Whilst Morris points out the relationship between the stick

as a tool and its control and transformation of matter, he also

remarks, “it is in far greater sympathy with matter because it

acknowledges the inherent tendencies and properties of that matter.”6

Morris also remarks on the paintings of Morris Louis, noting, “Louis

was even closer to matter in his use of the container itself to pour

the fluid.”7 From this perspective, Morris locates a system at play

in both Pollock’s ‘drip’ and Louis ‘pour.’ Morris maintains, “…order

is not… [sought in advance]…, but in the ‘tendencies’ inherent in

materials/process interaction.”8 Morris suggests that the encounter

between material and process reveals a system for which the making of

the artwork becomes an investigation of “how paint behaves under

certain conditions of gravity.”9 Here, Morris accentuates Pollock’s

and Louis’s painting in terms of how the effect of gravity produces a

certain response in the material.

What is evident in these works is the potentiality of the material to

be given expression through bodily possibility; with both the body

and gravity at play with material forces.

3Lee, “Some Kinds of Duration,” 25.

4Lee, “Some Kinds of Duration,” 32-3.

5Robert Morris, “Anti Form,” in Continuous Project Altered Daily: the Writings of

Robert Morris, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), 43.

6Morris, “Anti Form,” 43.

7Morris, “Anti Form,” 43.

8Robert Morris, “Some Notes on the Phenomenology of Making: the Search for the

Motivated,” in Continuous Project Altered Daily: the writings of Robert Morris,

(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), 77.

9Morris, “Some Notes on the Phenomenology of Making,” 77.



The possibilities for bodily actions, gravity and material forces to

come into play with each other, as noted by Morris, are also central

concerns in my practice. Similar to Morris, my concern is with the

resulting order both configured by chance events, for example, the

paint drip, and entropy’s self-determining effect. This is evident inthe disorderly effect created by the materiality of the paint once

its release outside of containment. The work of process-oriented art

extrapolated by Morris happens through chance, entropy, and what Lee

terms, the duration of the activity of making.10 It is during this

process of encountering material that chance events are internalized.

Morris’ account shows that the capacity of the hand to transform

matter collaborates with the effect of entropy, or other external

forces, such as gravity, in the production of form.

The inseparability between chance events and the forming effects of

entropy is partly derived from the gesture of doing, which is

provisional in nature. I discuss this interconnected-ness through the

propped and stacked up elements activated in several of Richard

Serra’s work, especially, his Prop series. This series mainly

demonstrates the potential increase of entropy’s effect through

propping, stacking, and wedging possibilities. These are methods of

forming that have also preoccupied my working practice. For example,

my work Reconfiguring still: proposals for the super light is formed

without permanent joins being used to secure the stacked

configuration. As a result, the distribution of the load results in

the work’s precariousness [Fig. 2]. The potential movement of the

work is brought to a standstill. At this point of suspension, the

potential of entropy’s effect is at its highest because the weight of

the work puts pressure on one of the slenderest supporting-

structures. The materials that prop eventually have inadequate energy

to support the load. In Chapter Two, I discuss this work in detail,

where I focus on the unpredictable operation of chance events and the

chronological flow of entropy’s dispersal of energy, as a physical

experience amplified through art making processes.

Contextualizing Smithson and Cage

Although Smithson is primarily recognized as a sculptor and Cage as a

musician and a composer, their conception of art resides within a




similar vein, namely, the processes of art’s production. As discussed

previously the inception of process-orientated art practices in the

1960s came to prominence through the work and writings of Morris,

such as, “Anti-Form,” “Notes on Sculpture, Pt. 4: Beyond Objects,”

and “Some Notes on the Phenomenology of Making: The Search for TheMotivated.”11 Also active during this period as an artist and writer

was Robert Smithson. In this exegesis, I focus on Smithson rather

than Morris, because of his writing on, and work with, the notion of

entropy. This investigation contributes to a detailed examination of

several of my works in terms of their ‘material self-ordering.’ This

notion of ‘material self-ordering’ is in part derived from John

Protevi’s reading of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari A Thousand

Plateau in Political Physics: Deleuze, Derrida, and The Body Politic.

I will discuss Protevi’s account of ‘material self-ordering’ in

relationship to Smithson’s work, Asphalt Rundown in Chapter Two.12

This discussion frames a consideration of my recent collaborative

work THROW , 2008, with a Melbourne-based artist Bianca Hester, which

I discuss in the context of chance events in Chapter Three.

Cage’s encounters with chance procedure were amongst the most

important contributions to the community of the Black Mountain

College, near Asheville, North Carolina, in the 1950s. This college

is notable for those who studied there at this time, such as Robert

Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Alan Kaprow, among many others. Cage

taught at the college in an expansively theatrical situation, and it

is here that he began to elaborate his experiment with chance as a

working process. Paul Schimmel goes so far as to argue that Cage

exerted a tremendous influence on the development of numerous postwar

art practices, such as, Fluxus, Happenings, Neo-Dada, and Arte

Povera.13 Cage is credited by Schimmel with constructing a context of

performance in which the primacy of the act in the production of

11All reprinted in Morris, Continuous Project Altered Daily: the Writings of Robert

Morris.

12It should be noted that in Difference and Repetition Deleuze presents a contrary

view of entropy to the one discussed here. However I do not take up these differences,

as it is not on the subject of entropy that I am proposing a relationship between

Smithson’s approach to art making and the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari. See Gilles

Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 228-9.

13Paul Schimmel, Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object 1949-1979 (Los

Angeles, Calif.: The Museum of Contemporary Art New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998),

17-18.



objects becomes the ‘subject’ of the work.14 Together with the painter

Robert Rauschenberg, and the dancer and choreographer Merce

Cunningham, Cage moved the conception of music, dance and the visual

arts, towards a unifying concept of event-based production. This

involved making a situation, to borrow Cage’s phrases, where‘anything may happen’ - generalized as ‘Happening .’15

Although Cage and Smithson employ different processes of ‘containing’

this open field, both employ approaches for making that bypass the

control of the artist over its production. Cage uses chance operation

in order to forego his ‘likes and dislikes’ in favor of an arbitrary

system of composition based on throwing.16 Smithson’s practice, on

the other hand, operates within a post-war reconfiguration of

sculptural tradition, teeming with the forces of entropy as the

work’s physical edge. Smithson expanded his exploration of entropy

through a sculptural practice that, as he states, “devotes itself to

the process of disintegration in highly developed structures.”17 To

this he adds, “After all wreckage is more interesting than

structure.”18 Most of Smithson’s late outdoor works are exposed to

nature’s processes of de-formation: sedimentation, erosion,

landslide, etc. In fact Smithson often chose sites specifically

because these conditions are present.

Although Smithson and Cage are not usually referred to in art

historical or art theoretical texts as related, they both nonetheless

make works that emphasize the temporality of matter and the

visibility of process. It is for this reason that I have drawn on

their practices to situate a discussion of my own. For example,

Smithson’s interest in the process of material-systems disintegration

is similar to Cage’s conception of art as directed towards a process

of “imitating nature in the manner of [its] operation,” rather than

14Schimmel, Out of Actions, 18.

15The term ‘Happening’ was largely explored in the theatrical performance practices of

Alan Kaprow. Kaprow was Cage’s pupil.

16John Cage (in conversation with Daniel Charles), For the Birds (Boston: M. Boyars,

c1981), 20.

17Robert Smithson (interview with Gregoire Müller), “…The Earth, Subject to

Cataclysms, Is A Cruel Master,” in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, ed. Jack

Flam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 257.

18Smithson (interview with Müller), “…the Earth, Subject to Cataclysms,” 257.



imitating the product created by natural processes.19 Also the

temporalities of chance events and entropy are both operations in the

physical world. It is through an analysis of the practices of

Smithson and Cage, I argue throughout this exegesis, that entropy and

chance form an open field of making. This is also the field in whichI locate my practice.

Whilst the practices of Smithson and Cage could be seen as mutually

exclusive, I argue they operate rather like two sides of the same

coin. On one side is the chance operation, evident in Cage’s musical

compositions reacting to the production of the ‘fixed object.’ And on

the other side, entropy provoking ways of reconfiguring the notion of

the ‘object of sculpture.’ Together these practices shift the

conception of art and its object from imitating the product of

physical formation found in nature or environment towards the process

that creates the object.

Utilizing entropy and chance

As the pioneers of these two categories, entropy and chance, in the

context of art making, Smithson and Cage draw on vastly different

fields of knowledge that they incorporate into their art practices.

Entropy, for example, is a term derived from Rudolf Clausius - a mid-

nineteenth-century German physicist - whose theory was focused on the

regime of disorder operating in physics.20 Whereas Cage’s use of

chance systems, such as the I Ching , is derived from a modern

philosophy of East Asia on the subject of change.21

The notion of entropy Smithson draws on is described by Clausius in

relation to the second law of Thermodynamic.22 Under this law entropy

is seen as the inherent potential in material systems resulting from

a concentration of energy.23 The First law of Thermodynamic describes

19This is Cage’s oft-repeated conception of art, quoted in, Jonathan Scott Lee,

“Mimesis and Beyond: Mallarme, Boulez, and Cage (1986-87),” in Writings about John

Cage, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 203.

20Cutler J. Cleveland, Dictionary of Energy (Burlington: Elsevier, 2005), 148.

21Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes, The I Ching, or, Book of Changes: the Richard

Wilhelm Translation, 3rd

ed. (London; Melbourne: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968).

22Frank. L. Lambert, “Time’s Arrow…Murphy’s Law…Entropy,” The Second Law of

Thermodynamics, http://www.secondlaw.com/two.html#time [accessed 08/04/09].

23Lambert, “Time’s Arrow…Murphy’s Law…Entropy,” http://www.secondlaw.com/two.html#time



the process that ensures energy is always active and constant.24 The

second law describes the effect of entropy through which the activity

of energy always dissipates over time. The trajectory of entropy

always proceeds, as Lee notes, “from order to a maximum disorder.”25

Whilst there are circumstances when a material state appears to bestatic there is always the potential of kinetic energy to be

released, as Frank Lambert notes, inevitably nothing is capable of

hindering an eventual entropic effect.26 In every material, sub-

system, human, organization, etc, entropy is, as Ann Reynolds writes,

“always-already present.”27 The future conditions of a material form

will always be transformed over time. For example, a crack in the

street or building structures, dead leaves or trees falling, rail

roads buckles, creep in shoes, ice-melting, rusting steel, so forth -

all of these offer some images of entropy at work.

Entropy in Smithson’s practice was not conceived as existing only as

a theoretical, conceptual or philosophical analog to his art works.

Rather it played a positive contribution to the formation of his

practice. Smithson embraced the chance that entropy would occur and

dissipate an art work once it had been completed. Through entropic

processes mass can accumulates, producing a load that displaces an

existing structure of an object. This is particularly evident in

Smithson’s Partially Buried Woodshed , where twenty truckloads of dirt

were placed onto an abandoned woodshed near Kent State University

[Fig. 3].28 Smithson ends the process of loading the dirt when the

woodshed is partly covered and the central beam cracks. The effect of

this event is that for the woodshed to remain upright it must

maintain a sufficient amount of stability. The energy of these two

processes, the load of dirt and the stability of the shed, are

concentrated in a central beam. The collapse of the shed will occur

when the central beam can no longer maintain its stability in the

face of entropic forces. As it eventuated the work was destroyed in

1975 before it got to that point as a result of an arson attack.29

This chance event will be discussed in Chapter Two.




27Ann Reynolds, Robert Smithson: Learning from New Jersey and Elsewhere (Cambridge,

Mass.: MIT Press, 2003), 197.

28Reynolds, Learning from New Jersey , 197.

29 Robert Hobbs, Robert Smithson: Sculpture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981),

191.



The I Ching , on the other hand, is conceived as a system of number

symbols that are used as an oracle to predict the future. The

procedure involves throwing three coins, or yarrow stalks, six times

whilst thinking of a specific question, and recording the result as adevice to determine a response to that question.30 This procedure

identifies, what Richard Wilhelm describes as, “the movement of

events taking place in the physical world.”31 This movement is

intepreted through the indication of the falling pattern of the coins

or the division of the yarrow stalks. The structure of the I Ching is

centered upon the acceptance of, as Wilhem notes the, “continual

process of change of one state into another.”32 The hexagrams,

resulting from the six throws of three coins, are symbols standing

for images or things which, as Wilhem writes, are “constantly

undergoing change.”33 The method of throwing which structures the I

Ching produces a perpetually changing combination of trigrams [Fig.

4]. Each throw of the three coins will only yield a further

differentiation of linear sign configurations.

For Cage however, chance is called upon to operate as a system, one

he employs to ensure his compositions are free of personal taste and

intention.34 Cage achieves this result through the chance order

created by throwing coins several times. The score of Water Music,

1952 [Fig. 5], for instance employs the operation of chance to

determine, as Cage states,

what sound pops up at what time and how loud,

etc. So I simply put into the chart things that

would produce not only sounds but would produce

actions that were interesting to see.35

30I have also used the I Ching system for my work Many Things Seen At Once, 2008. The

method of throwing was employed as to indicate the spatial positioning of the material

in a site. This work was exhibited within a group show Gertrude Studios 2008 at

Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, in Melbourne.

31Wilhelm, the I Ching , xlix-li.

32Wilhelm, the I Ching , l.

33Wilhelm, the I Ching , 1.

34Henry Cowell, “Current Chronicle,” in JOHN CAGE , ed. Richard Kostelanetz (London:

Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1971), 99.

35 Richard Kostelanetz, Conversing with Cage, 2nd ed. (New York; London: Routledge,

2003), 113.



The outcome is that the chance operation of throwing the coin

determines what is done or what form is produced, and therefore what

is heard.

Both systems, the I Ching and entropy, point to constant change andtransformation of matter as a condition of the physical world. What

connects Smithson and Cage for the purpose of this exegesis is not

only the operations of chance and entropy in the processes of their

art making. It is also their interest in systems and their

questioning of how each concept can be put to work in sculptural

practice, in the case of Smithson; and musical practice, in the case

of Cage. Both artists therefore attempt to let the conditions of art

making be contingent on the continual processes of changes in

material formation over time.

Formulating entropy and chance

The two terms, entropy and chance, continue to become less distinct

when considered in relation to foregrounding processes in the

conception and making of art advanced by Smithson and Cage. Inherent

in the notion of process is a reconsideration of temporality. It is

at this juncture that I argue chance and entropy converged. This

convergence is evident in terms of the stages of change and the

issues concerning matter’s energetic work.

For Smithson, his interest in systems led him to contain entropy’s

effect to the artwork’s material self-ordering. The temporal

dimension of the entropic situation is revealed slowly in Smithson’s

works, such as Partially Buried Woodshed, as mentioned previously. In

this work the potential collapse of the shed is the potential

encounter between two or more material systems. The irreversibilityof a work’s formation, in terms of past, present, future events is

also demonstrated in the continually crystallizing salt growing over

the structure of Spiral Jetty basalt base, as will be discussed in

detail in Chapter Two.

In the case of Cage, his chance-centered reading of the I Ching

system asserts a view of coincidence and the variable relation

between parts, and of objects and activities in time and place. The

use of chance operations allowed him to locate sounds, actions,

objects within a constantly changing ‘now’ of time, however uncertain



where their appearance in space or time. This is particularly the

case for Cage’s performance practice, such as, his composition for

radio, which is incorporated into several of his works: Imaginary

Landscape, SPEECH and Water Music. The score for these compositions

calls for one or several performers, determined by chance. In thecase of the Imaginary Landscape, chance determines the involvement of

up to twenty-five performers36 who simply tune into the dial of their

radios, selecting various stations to be heard in the course of the

work. The use of the radio and the act of tuning is diversified by

the geographical context of the piece. For example, if the piece is

performed in Jakarta, Indonesia, what would be heard in the work is a

set of local stations. The effect of this procedure for these radio

pieces is that they are performed differently every time. This

methodology connects these works to other process orientated art

works that involve task lists, such as the apparently random gesture

comprising Serra’s Verb List of 1967-68 [Fig. 6]. Or those described

earlier in Morris’ analyses of Pollock’s drip or Louis’ pour. Whilst

the approach taken by Morris, Serra, and Smithson may not be centered

as highly on chance as Cage, nonetheless in the act of making chance

is acknowledged.

If, entropy is always/already present in every kind of situation

(material, sub-system, human or organization), as noted above, then

an increased incident of accident is unavoidable. And if chance

consists of a complex set of events in the scheme of random

occurrence, then it is chance that exposes the limits or boundaries

of these apparently mutually exclusive terms. In effect entropy and

chance coincide in the exact timing in which these two forces meet.

Thus it is upon this juncture, which can be seen to be at play in my

works, and those of other artists examined in this exegesis.

36For a full critical discussion of the structural notation of Imaginary Landscape by

Cage and his use of a radio see Henry Cowell, “Current Chronicle,” in JOHN CAGE , ed.

Kostelanetz, 96-99.

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