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> JAMES WELLING. I was trying to work beyond visibility, with notions of sense, sensuality,

that which is of the senses.... I was engaged with

other topics of which legibility, or representation,

WERE YOU AFTER A TENSION always plays a part: hallucinations, extreme mental James Welling

BETWEEN states, the drawings of psychotics-castles of detail, sen-

Interviewed by sual, non-quotidian, non-representaional. There were LEGIBILITY AND ILLEGIBILITY

Laura Trippi ideas about the wild, wilderness, nature, geological for-

IN THESE PHOTOGRAPHS? mations. Fabulous landscapes . Creating things that

involve aspects of fiction or science fiction .

When I was working on the Aluminum Foil photographs, I

understood that I was creating a program or a machine to >LAURA TRIPPI. I just read a brief essay

manufacture randomness, a system to make random images . David Joselit wrote for your show in

It seemed extremely simple, straightforward, and economi-Vienna, which discusses your recent

cal, and also yielded all these images. This one piece of photographs of buildings by the

metal could be constantly refolded into itself. It was both a late 19th-century architect H.H.

physical way to make pictures, and an analogy for other Richardson. Joselit cites

things, like language: the way language uses the same Richardson's aim as that of "dis-

words but is constantly repermuted and reconfigured. ciplining the picturesque." The

> JW. I don't think we have feelings of the sublime anymore. phrase caught my attention in

It's a historical idea . I think these photographs do evoke connection with your Aluminum

a lost feeling of the sublime. The sublime I'm interested Foil photographs and the way they

in is not a landscape, but more like snow on a T. V. sort of traffic in the picturesque or

screen. It has its own kind of beauty-if you can sublime .

apply the word "beauty" to it. We 're putting 19th-

century terms with a mid-

20th-century electronic

landscape . ... But the

idea of electronic

snow, of raw elec-

Ironic states, it was

a pretty powerful

idea. I don't think

I've ever really

talked about com-

ing out of making

video tapes and

going into pho-

tography. But that

was one of the rea-

sons that, when I

figured out what I

wanted to do with the

photograph, I worked

the way I worked in the

video studio, on a table top,

with a tripod, etc .

186-7, James / ng produced a 1es of "circle 1ntings" that >ar a striking esemblance to the "sphere 1tremas" of ' Mandelbrot, I among the

least obviously " fractional" of fractal images, ptinted in black-and-white in the book (The Fractal Geometry of Nature) . In Welling's paintings , the massing shapes come across at once as vaguely ominous and profoundly pop , sugges-tive in this

context of a deadpan com-

mentary on the "promiscuity"

'of fractal graph-ics (even, more [enerally, on that f simulation), the tr-contagion of Ir allure. '

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> LT. That brings us back to the idea of > JW. As I began to read Mandelbrot and other articles in the mid-80s, I real-

" primitive experiments," of aluminum ized that I was concerned with these ideas not as a scientist, but as some-

foi I or draped fabric as a device one who was occupied with forms of visual art. That 's why I really

for making random images . couldn't continue studying , or begin to study, mathematics . What I got

Your' involvement with fractal from reading about fractals were the biographies in Mandelbrot, the

mathematics developed out of biographies of the pioneers and the different figures in mathematics,

that method, after you'd been the lesser figures . I thought the word " fractals " was becoming a buzz

dealing with the notion of word that had no meaning anymore. The phenomenon it describes is

manufacturing randomness in so widespread that, once. you start thinking about it , it completely

your photographs for some loses its meaning .

time. Why is it that ·you now There is something , though, about randomness and

feel so strongly about keeping a chaos and chance that can be perceived through all

distance between your work and the mystification of received ideas. I think that has

chaos theory? to do with the way my work operates, which is why it

was very exciting when I began to read about chaos

mathematics. I was already interested in these phe-

nomena intuitively. The Aluminum Foil photographs

can be looked at on a number of different levels : as jokes; as re-

reading the codes of photography; or about investigating something

that provokes a perceptual response in the viewer. You 're looking at

this image but there ' s something else you're looking at also . What you

see isn't what you really get. There is something else-the effe ct of

photography. I'm not making you aware of looking at photographs , but

there is something, some sort of "smoke" in the air. June 20, 1989

In 1986-7, James Welling produced a series of "circle paintings " that bear a striking resemblance to the "sphere tremas" of Mandelbrot, among the least obviously "fractional" of fractal images, printed in black-and-white in the book (The Fractal Geometry of Nature) . In Welling's paint ings , the mas sing shapes come across at once as vaguely ominous and profoundly pop, sugges-tive in this

context of a deadpan com-

mentary on the "promiscuity"

of fractal graph-ics (even, more

generally, on that of simulation), the

near-contagion of their allure .

"The new science of chaos" turned to a very old word in seeking a centering term that could draw together its diversity. "Chaos" would seem to fill the bill, less because of its precision as a label for the phenomena the new science has engaged (like the weather) or uncovered (like fractal relations and strange attractors), but because it makes the boldest claim. It evokes all the varieties of energetic and unpredictable turmoil in experience,

MARTIN MEISEL CHAOS

DEJA-VU

and-as a science-promises to shift the frontier between what we understand as order and disorder. A lot of human activity, not only in science but in art, has been located on that frontier.

It is not the first time "chaos" has been drafted into the ranks of .scientific nomenclature. The seventeenth-century diemist J.B. van Helmont, looking to name a new class of substances that appeared to him as dematerialized transformations of matter, substituted the Dutch g for the Greek chi in Xaos, and called it gas. Still, one might object that the "science of chaos" is a paradoxical

A. A VIOLENT ORDER IS DISORDER; AND misnomer, if "science" means enlarging the territories of what we B. A GREATDISORDER IS AN ORDER. THESE can grasp and describe, and "chaos" is taken to mean absolute

TWO THINGS ARE ONE. (PAGES OF ILLUSTRATIONS.) disorder, disorder at the limiting extreme. Finding recursive patterns and generative rules in chaos, and ways to represent both

-WALLACE STEVENS, its behavior and its structure, would seem to negate the truly "CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS" chaotic. Here knowing finds itself in much the same boat as

imagining, for this deconstructive paradox has plagued-and stimulated-the arts through a very long engagement with the

problem of representing chaos. How does one represent the unimaginable? Is not representation necessarily a taming?

In any attempt to imagine chaos one has to use indirection, and even then vestiges of order are sure to smuggle themselves in. Hear St. Augustine in about 400 A.D. on the difficulty of really imagining chaos: ... I conceived of it as having innum e rable forms and diverse, and therefore indeed did I not at all conceive of it in my mind ... my mind tossed up and down certain ugly and hideous forms, all out of order, but yet forms they were notwithstanding; and this I called without form . .. true reason did persuade me, that I must utterly unease it of all remnants of forms whatsoever, if so be I meant to conceive a matter absolute without form: and I could not. For sooner could I imagine that not to be at all, which should be deprived of all form, than once conceive there was likely to be anything betwixt form an.d nothing; a matter neither formed nor nothing; formless, almost nothing. I Augustine here names some of the common strategies for representing chaos: endless multiplication and diversification; creating a mere jumble among existent fo1·ms; and pursuing the path of negation, to arrive at a shadowy approximation of nothing. Although the common vernacular use of "chaos" is more suggestive of overwhelming presence than of negation and absence, the etymology of the word, its early cosmic significance, and its long association with origins and endings are fraught with the notion of nothing-a Something that is Nothing. The root of the word is the Greek verb stem Xa, meaning to yawn or to gape. It first shows up in Hesiod's Theogony (ca. seventh- century

1. St. Augustine's Confessions, Loeb Classlcal Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), II, pp. 294-95. Tr. Wiiiiam Watts (1631) .

B.C.) in his account of the very beginnings: "Truly, first of all did Chaos come into being, and then broad-bosomed Gaia [Earth], a firm seat of all things forever, and misty Tartaros in a recess of broad-wayed earth, and Eros, who is fairest among immortal gods .... "2

Chaos is imagined as the precursor and enabling ground of "what is," perhaps as an instantiating discontinuity, momentous because it is a hole in the absence of the solid, teeming, and various All.

Absence, vacancy, undifferentiated shapelessness-the condition of next-to-nothing-are also in the nature of the first chaos as imagined in the opening verses of .Genesis and in its interpretative tradition: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The word for "the deep" (tehom) is equally well translated as "the abyss"; and Calvin wrote of the words rendered as "without form" and "void" (tohu and bohu): The Hebrews use them when they designate anything empty and confused, or vain, and nothing worth. Undoubtedly Moses placed them in opposition to all those created objects which pertain to the form, the ornament and the perfection of the world. Were we now to take away, I say, from the enrth nil thnt God ndded nfter the time here alluded to, then we should

and third stage, until it f the individuated to imagine as it

han Nothing. jumble of "what is," or hat is," has used more one medium. What is

ery act of n order sometimes metimes in the medium s it seems as if order the material world n. gy, especially in the

ce, is simple inversion: Upside Down, where the

its head. Where voking and representing making the whole thing gh in actual social and rsion can give way to

ply Dumpty may not be emblem for John

let Mad Fashions, Od he point (Fig. 4). In its matic and reversible ize the aberrant and time in England so that r~ed right side up ing lost his head.4 dering and even self-as the medium, appears s by the Flemish artist origina~ly in about

engravings inspired by .s The constellations are the element·s. Water and ctions, rocks pile up et the image takes the he conventional ugh bilateral symmetry. ormal order, is at war,

entering, odicity,

and their the 0 in

man pair of

1 ·.instru~tive bner is

fl ~ · BU;:::•ly

e the ct er of

diversity I a · s chaos. ;enerating

![sensory I and

11 the film, ,ikely to rbitrarily

a 1evidence ' now

of the ,I of.

~ ommg

I then man in

exits, ·fd I

each The

onality, ~ ation to

r

lity, no in the

the ~ ly impose

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"The new science of chaos" tur could draw together its diveri;d precision as a label for the phe uncovered (like fractal relatio claim. It evokes all the varieti

MARTIN MEISEL CHAOS

DEJA-VU A. A VIOLENT ORDER IS DISORDER; AND

8. A GREAT DISORDER IS AN ORDER. THESE TWO THINGS ARE ONE. (PAGES OF ILLUSTRATIONS.)

and-as understa in scienc

It ranks of J.B. van appeare subs ti tut Still, on mis no me can gras disorder, patterns

-WALLACE STEVENS, its behav "CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS" chaotic.

imaginin stimulate

problem of representing chaos. representation necessarily a ta

In any attempt to imagin of order are sure to smuggle th difficulty of really imagining c ... I conceived of it as having inn um conceive of it in my mind ... my mind to forms they were notwithstanding; and t utterly unease it of all remnants of for form: and I could not. For sooner co than once conceive there was likely to nothing; formless, almost nothing. I Augustine here names some endless multiplication and dive and pursuing the path of negati Although the common vernacul presence than of negation and significance, and its long assoc' of nothing-a Something that is meaning to yawn or to gape. It

.. ~

2 . As translated In G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven, The Presacrstlc Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 24-25.

3 . John Calvin, Commenttrrles on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis (1554), tr. John King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), Vol. I, p. 73.

have this rude and unpolished, or rather shapeless chaos. 3

Most attempts to describe cosmic chaos resort to the subtractive method, telling what it is not. For the artist in words, the rhetoric of negation is mightily convenient for the (non) rep-resentation of chaos. But what of the artist in images? How can he or she represent that chaos whose nature can be best imagined as what it is not?

In the representation of chaos, there is a broad division in representational strategies, between imitation and analogue; the one is an attempt to enact chaos directly, by eliminating what passes for order, and the other an attempt to map chaos through a rigorously ordered algorithm. A visual analogue for the chaos imagined as "what is not" appears in a treatise by the Renaissance physician and hermetic philosopher Robert Fludd. A syncretic exposition of the nature of the macrocosm, Fludd 's Ultriusque Cosmi postulates, as a first anticosmic state of things, a primordial matter without qualities or limits. In a tour de force of visual economy, it is represented as a solid black square with, along each of its four sides, the phrase Et sic in infinitum, "And thus to infinity" (Fig. 1). Fludd envisages the transition to cosmos as going through a series of phases. Irradiated by the Divine light (Fig. 2), the minimal state of

and third stage, until it f the individuated to imagine as it an Nothing.

jumble of "what is," or hat is," has used more one medium. What is

ery act of order sometimes

metimes in the medium s it seems as if order the material world

gy, especially in the e, is simple inversion: Upside Down, where the ts head. Where voking and representing

aking the whole thing h in actual social and sion can give way to pty Dumpty may not he emblem for John

et Mad Fashions, Od he point (Fig. ·4). In its

atic and reversible ize the aberrant and time in England so that

rned right side up ing lost his head. 4

ering and even self-as the med:ium, appears s by the Flemish artist originally in about

engravings inspired by s The constellations are he elements. Water and tions, rocks pile up et the image takes the

e conventional ugh bilateral symmetry. ormal order, is ,at war,

entering,

and their lo dicity,

, o in the man

pair of

instructive ner ~n els

is four,

te

a suddenly

the of ct er

diversity I a

1 ~ s ch~os. renerat1ng

/etl:~ry film, 1likely to l ~ r~itrarily jl evidence 11 now I of 'I of the ' r. oming Ji then. 1man in ird exits,

I j each

The tonality, ~ ation to ' 1 ·

[i~ty, th:0

the ly impose

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"The new science of chaos" tu could draw together its diverid precision as a label for the ph uncovered (like fractal relatio claim. It evokes all the varieti

MARTIN MEISEL CHAOS

DEJA-VU appeare substitut Still, on A. A VIOLENT ORDER IS DISORDER; AND misnome

8. A GREAT DISORDER IS AN ORDER. THESE can gr as TWO THINGS ARE ONE. (PAGES OF ILLUSTRATIONS.) disorder

patterns -WALLACE STEVENS, its beha

"CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS" chaotic. imaginin stimulat

problem of rep'resenting chaos. representation necessarily a ta

In any attempt to imagi of order are sure to smuggle t difficulty of really imagining c ... I conceived of it as having inn um conceive of it in my mind ... my mind to forms they were notwithstanding; and t utterly unease it of all remnants of for form: and I could not. For sooner co than once conceive there was likely to nothing; formless, almost nothing. l Augustine here names some endless multiplication and dive and pursuing the path of negati Although the common vernacul presence than of negation and significance, and its long assoc of nothing-a Something that is meaning to yawn or to gape. I

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rts head. Where tvoking and representing !making the who~e thing ~h in actual social and [rsion can give way to in.ply Dumpty may not he ~ emblem for John let Mad Fashions , Od he point (Fig .' 4). In its

lmatic and reversible ~ize the aberrant and , time in England so that rned right side up Ung lost his head.4 dering and even self-as the med:ium, appears s by the Flemish artist

I originally in about 11 engravings inspired by . s The constellations are 1lthe element's. _W"ater and ctions, rocks pile up '[et the image takes the he conventional

~ugh bilateral symmetry. ~ormal order, is at war,

En .. lodicity,

and their ,so in the

man pair of

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The tonality, I • t ~ allon o lity, · no in the

the ly impose

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"The new science of chaos" tu could draw together its diversi precision as a label for the ph uncovered (like fractal relatio claim. It evokes all the varieti

MARTIN MEISEL CHAOS

DEJA-VU

and-as

in scien It

appeare substitut Still, on A. A VIOLENT ORDER IS DISORDER; AND misnome

B. A GREATDISORDER IS AN ORDER. THESE can gr as TWO THINGS ARE ONE. (PAGES OF ILLUSTRATIONS.) disorder,

patterns -WALLACE STEVENS, its behav

"CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS" chaotic. imaginin stimulate : ·

problem of representing chaos. ~· representation necessarily a ta

In any attempt to imagin of order are sure to smuggle th difficulty of really imagining c ... I conceived of it as having innum conceive of it in my mind ... my mind to forms they were notwithstanding; and t utterly unease it of all remnants of for form: and I could not. For sooner co than once conceive there was likely to nothing; formless, almost nothing. I Augustine here names some endless multiplication and dive and pursuing the path of negati Although the common vernacul presence than of negation and significance, and its long associ of nothing-a Something that meaning to yawn or to gape.

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things differentiates qualities through a second and third stage, until it achieves ihe more familiar chaos of a jumble of the individuated elements (Fig. 3), a chaos that becomes easier to imagine as it

approaches Something rather than Nothing. Representing chaos as a jumble of "wha

1

t is," or even of that which underlies "what is," has used more than one strategy, in more than one medium. What is striking is how powerfully the very act of representation evokes order, an order sometimes inherent in the strategy, and sometimes in the medium and its conventions. Sometimes it seems as if order were generated, as it were, by the material world itself, through self-organization.

One commonplace strategy, especially in the Fig. 1. Robert Fludd , Ultriu sq11 e Cosmi , 16 17. Photo: Th e Fo lge,Shnkes pem Ubmy, Wa• hing••n o.c. Middle Ages and the ·Renaissance, is simple inversion:

Carnival, ·or the World Turned Upside Down, where the existing hierarchy is stood on its head. Where inversion gives the means of invoking and representing chaos, structure is preserved, making the whole thing comfortably provisional; though in actual social and imaginative fact-, Carnival inversion can give way to promiscuouis levelling, and Humpty Dumpty may not he easy to restore. The title-..page emblem for J oho Taylor's 164·2 doggerel pamphlet Mad Fashions, Od Fashions inadvertenily makes the point (Fig .' 4). In its exceedingly symmetrical, systematic and reversible way, it is intended to characterize the aberrant and

Fig. 2 . Robect Fludd , u 11,i1a que Cornd , 16 17. Photo' ."antipodis'd" conditions of the time in England so that The Fo lgec Shnkes pem Libmy, Wn•hington o.c. they could he corrected and turned right side up

again. Instead, in 1649, the King lost his head,4 A curious instance of ordering and even self-

ordering, in the matter as well as the medj um, appears in an image of the primal Chaos by the Flemish artist Abraham Diepenheek, designed originally in about 1655 for an elaborate hook of engravings inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses (Fig. 5),5 The constellations are at war with each other, as are the elements. Water and fire stream in all possible directions, rocks pile up wit h no heed to gravity. And yet the image takes the shape of a wide ellipse within the conventional rectangular plate, and has a rough bilateral symmetry.

Fig. 3. Robe rl Fludd , Ult ri1uq11 e Cosmi, 1617 . Ph oto : Th e Folge' Shnk,.pem Librn,y, Washington o.c. The Zodiac, though all out of normal order, is at war,

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B TWO THIN

not randomly, but l'ogically, each s ign with its opposite, six months apart. The fighting pairs fall into two arcs on either side of the diagonal marked by the sun and the moon , one of the odd months and

MAD FASHIONs, OD FASHIONS,

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one of the evens, in the order 1/7, 3/9, 5/11 and 2/8, 4110, 6/12.

If primal chaos is primal innocence as in origin legends, number is the serpent in the garden, the insidious agent of the fall. Number enters as soon as the extreme of disorder is conceived positively, as in the Chaos of a Something. But then-unlike chaos whe·n it is conceived as next to Nothing-chaos appears in two modes: it can be imagined as a condition of unlimited plurality and diversity, or it can be imagined as a condition of extreme simplicity, of undifferentia-tion to the point of sameness. Here it is interesting to turn again to Genesis for a pair of scientific parables, narratives that propose apparently conflicting models for the transition between chao s and cosmos on the one hand, and cosmos and chaos on the other.

In Genesis as in many cosmogonies, the ~1;,,:;,,~;~;. i~~~~' titl e page , Mad Fa,hion" path that leads to cosmos from the featurele s s

and amorphous primal state is division and multiplication, or to put it more abstractly, differentiation. The narrator of the opening section tells how-where before there was only abysmal darkness and confusion-God made light and divided- the light from the darkness. Having so also initiated a differentiable succession of tim~s or "days," He divides the waters above from the waters below with a firmament, distinguishes Heaven and Earth, the seas from the dry land, the vegetable kingdom in all its consistent variety from the ground that brings it forth. The governing verb for the first four days is "divide"; and division leads to multiplication. In fact, the word that means "create" in Genesis 1: 1 seems to mean cut or divide when it appears elsewhere. On the other hand, the days of division and multiplication have

a certain sameness about them, in the language. "Everything is numerically ordered; creation proceeds through a rhythmic pr~cess of incremental repetition; each day begins with God's

4. Mad Fashions, Od Fashions, All Out of Fashions, or, The Emblems of These Distracted Times (London: T. Banks, 1642).

5. The engraving reproduced here Is by B. Picart, from The Temple of the Muses; or, The Principal Histories of Fabulous Antiquity (Amsterdam , 1733) . The edition Is translated from and based on Mlchel de Marolles' Les Tableaux du Temple des Muses (Paris, 1655).

world-making utterance ('And God said ... ') and ends with [a] formal refrain. " 6 It is not simply differen t iation, and multiplicity, that goes into the making of cosmos, hut numeration, which here serves to control and differentiate recurrence.

If differentiation, the creation of diversity and multiplicity where before there was a generalized unspecific sameness, is the route from chaos to cos m os in Genesis, it is also the route from cosmos to chaos. The final piece of metahistorical framing in Genesis offers the story of the Tower of Babel, the chaos of language. "Confuse" (halal) is the operative word for God's linguistic intervention, reinforced in the text by an onomastic pun on Babel (Babylon). But despite a long association be t ween the confusion of tongues and the primal confusion, the mechanism of the return to chaos is not in fact reversal, a stirring together of elements that constituted a cosmos tl:lrough division and separation, hut on the contrary, more division and separation. As a result of the confusion of tongues, the languages and peoples of the earth are multiplied and different iated as the animals were when brought forth from the earth, hut with opposite intent. One print from a design by Karel van Mander (before 1604) shows the peoples of the earth now in

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B TWO THIN

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6. Robert Alter, The Art of Bibi/ca/ Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), pp. 142-43.

all the variety of national costumes and racial feature, already with diverse alphabets (Greek, Hebrew, pseudo-Egyptian), monumental styles, and religions, streaming away to the four quarters of the earth while a storm threatens the magnificent counter-creation of their lost homogeneity (Fig. 6). Multiplicity and diversity are evidently not all that it takes to constitute a universe; in fact they can work to constitute its opposite. Number itself as the path between chaos and cosmos is a two-way street .

It is, of course, the perce_ptual and cognitive dimension, the subjective side of things that determines whether one experiences number and multiplicity as chaos. The best

Fig. 6. Van Mo.nd e r/Dol endo, Confusio Babylonica, c . 1850. Phoio: The Huntington Library, San Marino , Calif.

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B TWO THIN

Preface A popular way of think-ing about art is that it is "a process of mak-ing order out of disor-der, of ordering events in experience ... it is a search for the truth."1 In the last twenty-five years , however, a great deal of work has been done to unsettle such notions of order and disorder. During the late si x ties and early seventies espe-cially, a period of intense activity around ideas of process-as-product took place in Europe and America , opening new formal and conceptual arenas in the arts .2 It has been in the field of science that the most sustained and revolutionary explo-ration of chaos has taken place. From the point of view of those involved in the arts, perhaps the most interesting effect has been a return to the

Marcia Tucker, Director examination of the kinds of chaos we experience daily, "to the universe we see and touch .. .. to phenomena on a human scale."3 This exhibition is an exploration of some of the most compelling issues raised by the new science of chaos as they relate to recent works of art, both in terms of style and substance. Our desire to understand the ways in which art is part of and reflects on other fields and disciplines, other arenas of inquiry, has led to this undertaking . My thanks to Curator Laura Trippi, who organized the exhibition; to the staff, interns and volunteers of The New Museum who have so generously contributed talents and time above and beyond their job requirements; to those who have graciously provided the loans of so many works of art; to M&Co. for the innovative catalogue design and exhibition design concept ; and above all to the artists who have addressed the subject with unpre-dictable and challenging results. The New York State Council on the Arts has generously contributed to the exhibition and to Christian Marclay's Ta p e Fa I I, w h i I e the J e r om e Foundation has helped support both the Marclay installation and the instal-lation by Kathryn Clark and Ann Hamilton . To these organizations , we

are grateful. Special thanks also to the Luce Foundation for making the exhibition design possible, to Carol and Arthur Goldberg for providing assistance on a crucial com-ponent of the show, and to Richard Ekstract for helping Out with video . We are delighted to have been able to work with Kevin Maginnis of KAOS, and Klaus Ottmann, curator of the com-panion exhibition Strange Attractors: The Spectacle of Chaos in Chicago. That both organizations should have been working on similar con-cepts, but virtually different exhibitions, at the same time seems entirely appropriate to the subject at hand. We are pleased to have been able to join forces by presenting these shows under one rubric in New York and Chicago simultaneously.

1. Gustave Harrow, "Creativity and Control, N Journal of Arts Management and Law (Summer 1986): 74 .

~ize1~ ~Yar~i~~~fJ· s~::~a~~uui:::ih~fi;~B:r~~~~a~~~a: April, 1969; Op Losse Schroeven: Situatias en

~'l~r~f5/~i~~':~ii-~1}~~~~~ ~~;~~;J'J,!s~iJ:;:,1::JS, ~~~~~ nized by Marcia Tucker and James Monte, Whitney Musuem of American Art , New York, May - July, 1969; ~nu~e~s:,'~~~teo~i~~i~~dct~be~~~~6~i.ppard, Seattle Art

3. James Gleick, Chaos: Making A New Science (New York: Viking Penguin , 1987), p. 7.

TWO THI

might Tango begins missing

be a short animated film, Zbigniew Rybczinski's (1982). 1 The film, some eight minutes long, with a furnished room, a fixed interior with a fourth wall , like a stage set seen from a

Fig . 7. Zb igni ew Rybczynski , Tan go, 1982 . Ph oto: Int e rn a ti ona l Film Exc hange Lid.

Fig. 8 . Zb ignie w Rybc t ynski, Ta ngo, 1982. Photo: h1t e rn 11ti onnl Film Exchange Lt d.

Fig . 9 . Zbigni ew Rybczy ns ki , Ta ngo , 19 82. Photo: Int erna ti onal Fi lm Exc ha nge Ltd.

moderately high angle. First a soccer ball bounces into the room through the open window in the rear wall. A boy appears (Fig. 7), looks about, climbs in after the ball, snags it, and slides out the window head first. Then it happens again; and again. Meanwhile a woman carrying a crying infant enters one of the three doors, sits at the table, pops out a breast, nurses the infant, rises, lays it in a crib near the window, and goes out. And again. Meanwhile a thief slips through the window, as oblivious ·of the others as they of him (Fig. 8), flattens against the wall, steals a bundle from the top of the shelves, and slips out. Then a man in a hat and coat comes through another door and puts the bundfe on the shelves where the thief will steal it. Other figures and actions accumulate: a grandmotherly figure sets soup on the table; a grandfatherly figure sits, eats, and removes the plate. A nude in shoes enters, (Fig. 9) puts on a dress and panties, and leaves. A plumber carries in a toilet, sets it down, then picks it up and carries it through. An old woman in black lies down on the bed, crosses her arms on her breast and is seen to by a man with a black briefcase; then she gets up and goes. Every action is made repeatable, and once begun, it is repeated, all to the sound of a tango beat, endlessly recurring.

Before we are through, there has been an incremental accumulation of

7 . Tango, written, photographed, and directed by ZblCnlew Rybczynskl , music by Janusz Hajduk, short Fiim Studio "Se-ma-for" /Fiim Pols kl production, 1982.

about thirty people, moving about and around each other, entering, acting, and leaving, like pieces of clockwork in their periodicity, except that their movements are syncopated like· the music and numbers increase. There is an incremental accumulation also in recurring sounds: the boy cries, shuts up, and cries; a man falls off the table while changing a lightbulb and yells; a pair lovers, grappling on the bed, makes passionate noises.

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It is the experience of the perceiver that is most instructive in all this. The perceiver is like a juggler whose partner is throwing plates at him: first two plates in the air, then four, then six, all going round together. Every addition demands a more complex awareness and a more divided attention until suddenly it all collapses. The system crashes in one's head despite the fact (in Tango) that one never doubts the systematic character of the phenomena. The multiplicity of the elements and the diversity of the recurrences are more than the mind can hold in a comprehensive pattern, and all at once it is experienced as chaos.

Quite as interesting here as the observer's role in generating chaos, as the quantitative aspect, as the part played by sensory and intellectual overload, as the sudd.enness of the collapse and transform~tion, is tbe observer's compensatory response. In the film, having . lost a comprehensive grasp of the whole, one is likely to fasten attention on a region, or on a few elements, arbitrarily chosen, whose recurrence continues to be perceived as a pattern. These provide a stay against vertigo, and evidence of the order and regularity of the whole, which is now actually a matte•r of faith. Making such an island of stability means focusing one's attention at the expense of the rest, so much so that when the thirty-odd figures, coming and going, very rapidly diminish to just a few, and then one, it always comes as a surprise. (The old woman in black, in her last resurrection, picks up the ball and exits, leaving an em·pty stage.)

Most of the figures in Tango are oblivious of each other, most of the actions independent of each other. The only o significant patterning is recurrence, the only directionality, numerical increase. There is no structure of subordination to further organize the parts, no pervasive interactive causality, no functions within an overarching purpose. One cannot in the immediate throes of apperception impose a narrative on the sequence of events. One can, of course, retrospectively impose a comprehensive interpretation, as a proposition on what the

8. The Tango phenomenon would probably be understood In coenltlve psycholoey as a function of "attention ." In the language of one textbook, "attention Is conceived of as being a very llmlted mental resource. " The writer adduces spatial and animate metaphors, as of a narrow workspace that gets too crowded, or a small company of sln,e:le-mlnded task· demons, or (from

film is "about": alienation and solipsism in modern society; the housing shortage in Poland; or as the American advertising has it, "A Metaphoric Picture of Human Fate." Interpretation is the effort to make sense of the chaos, to subsume it, to displace it, to make it go away. But such thematic propositions, even the more plausible ones, do not on repetition of the direct experience of the film's succession of alter the experience. That is, they do not prevent onset of chaos, perceptual-cognitive collapse.B

images the

The chaos of rhe many, of multitudinousness, perhaps comes more easily to the modern imagination than the chaos of indifferentiation, of the one. But in the chaos of the many, multitudinousness and indifferentiation after a po-int seem to converge. Multitudinousness comes to be experienced, not as number, but as numberlessness. Number, on the other hand, has served as an imaginative tool for dispelling chaos, or distancing it, or working magic against it, from the beginning. Counting things, however, has meant diminishing or ignoring their infinite differences. Mensuration-which depends, not just on comparison, but on the establishment of a unit of comparison-has entailed reducing multivalence to the mere fact of sameness. Through counting and measuring, identity, or discrete individuality, being oneself and not other, admits the possibility of interchangeability-but it also lays. down the groundwork for differentiation. Without identity there is no basis for enumeration; but without number there is no path of connection between the one and the many. When the possibility of a universe of experience resting on a permanent ground of chaos is imagined in ancient Greece, Sophocles frames the question as a challenge to the principle of identity, on being oneself and not other; and he answers it by showing the path between the one and the many.

What is at stake for human beings in the imagination of chaos? Why its persistence in the face of so much a·mbivalence and unsuitable mental equipment? There are clues in the opposing terms that regularly frame its representation: chance and necessity; formlessness and form; heterogeneity and homogeneity; diffusion and coherence; promiscuity and segregation; random and recurrent; the many and the one. But the real energies that have powered the imagination of chaos come from deeper

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levels, inhabited by feelings about liberty and security, desire an·d constraint, vioience within and without; by the appetite for life itself and the fear of the loss of self, of dissolution and death. These energies show themselves with some frequency in the representations of chaos, with memorable effect: , in, for example, the arguments over the existence of the void; in the numerous modern representations of terminal entropy; and in what has been called "the excremental vision," a revulsion from death and decay, and from the body itself. In much cosmogonic myth, the underworld is where the remains of ancient Chaos are exiled and confined, and there they erect a parodic kingdom of the Dead. But if what is called the excremental vision links chaos to death and dissolution and loss of self in many instances, it works quite differently in others. In, for example, Rabelais' f;argantua and Jarry's Ubu Roi, the excremental immoderate antidote to a costive propriety and pedantry; and chaos is the expression, not of end of function and coherence and the return nothing, but of vitality. There the imagination chaos is the assertion of life over form.

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This exhibition would not have been

possible without the

4 ( Many others have

contributed to the process of organizing this exhibition. For their

participation, and for s haring their work and ideas, I want to war11lly thank all the artists. Tibor

collaboration during its in'itial stages of the late

Willia"' Olander, who died of AIDS on March 18 of this year. Kal11lan and Marlene McCarty of M&Co., providing an

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To Bill I owe both the thoughtful extraordinary design for the catalogue and design concept for inspiration for the show and

support through its earliest 11lonths of develop11lent, but also gratitude of a 11lore far-reaching though less identifiable kind for the

re11larkable, irreverent exa11lple that h e set for 11le, and the

11le11lory of his generous

the exhibition, have been fantastic collaborators. To John Cage, Orshi Drozdik, Gary Indiana, Luce lrigaray, Martin Meisel, and Ja11les Welling, I want to express "'Y appreciation for their contributions to the catalogue. Tod Mijanovich, Nor11la Moruzzi, Mario Mousse, and Ti"' Yohn all assisted enor11lously with "'Y ess ay, not to 11lention the invaluable in-house advice of Alice Yang. Rosetta

Brooks, Chistopher Cox, Randal Davis, Cynthia Hedstro11l, Ken Kirby, Grace Stanislaus, and Richard Voss offered valuable ideas

encouragement in general.

and infor11lation. For their generous assistance, a

At The New Museuni, 1ny colleagues have war11l thanks to Richard Ekstra c t, Carol

and Arthur Goldberg, and Hank assisted in countless ways . Above all, Alice Yang

has rvorked tirelessly coordinating every aspect of exhibition and catalogue production, contributing incisive

and thoughtful ideas every step of the way, including editing each entry in the catalogue. The Project Teani served both as an

Luce Ill, a11long others. To the lenders and the galleries, I want to extend thanks for their cooperation. It has been a pleasure working

invaluable sounding board for my ideas, especially in their early with Klaus Ott11lann and stages, and as a patient and e nterprising resource throughout the

curatorial process: Susan Cahan and Russell Ferguson offe red Kevin Maginnis to

particularly insightful questions and considerations, while Clare Micuda , Barabara Niblock, Wayne Rottman, Cindy Smith, and

create a the11latic bridge between this

Susan Stein have seen the exhibition through all its stages, enriching it immeasurably. Teresa Branilette and David Sweet worked closely with me coordinating research. Patricia Thornley and Mark Kloth provided valued continuity and

advice. Jill Newmark has managed like the "pro" that site is in all registrarial matters, while Ginny Bowen has

stepped with aplomb into the task of overseeing the installation. Sara Palnier has been a boon in the area

of Public Affairs, ••hile Toni DeVito furnished more

show and their exhibition, "Strange

Attractors: The Spectacle of

Chaos."

than simply the support of an excellent and cheerful Director of D eve lopmen t. Finally, I want to thank

Marcia Tucker and Ellen Holtzman for their confidence and guidance,

c..,

and the entire staff for their participation. L ;IVRA TRIPPI, CURATOR

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siofi in" an atmosphere turbulent with new Jechnologies . \_ The guiding myths and models of modernity have been hopelessly infiltrated and frayed , and even the once invigorating concept of "crisis" itself seem s \ o have

- co l lapsed ~ This is a journey into space '_ the "phase space" ~f ' turbulence and "sensitive depe,ndence"; of "multidimensional degrees of freedom"; of the decay,

I h a d thi s p hr as e in m y head, creation, an.d random fluduation 1 of ,info rmat ion . ' It· "Wh a t ? I s thi s da nci ng?" "Wh at i s thi s ? D ancin g?" began as an experiment, a gamble, an essay in the

- .... [T ]he onl y th ing l eft o f 71;e C~ucib(e h a d to Ile th e l i ne sense Of an attempt or try, a search for the sfnangely -.: ·wha t i s th is d a n ci n g?" a nd th ere had t o b e a d a nc e. fractured fairy tales of an elmerging regime. ' ,~ - E.l iza b e t h Le Co mpt-;, _

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T-Me ideas embedded in the languag~ and images of Benoit Mandelbrot's compendium and guidebook, The "chaos science" strike a familiar, strangely seductive Fractal ,Geometry of Nature, was· publ ished in 11983. In r

_ ·chord. Like the shape's and figures of i,ts "fractal " 1985, Goethe House New York sponsored the first exh i-. ~ geometry, our daily experience is fragmented ; fraught oition--of fractal graphics, produced by scientists and

with ar bitrary juxtapositions, patterns of perceRtion and offered in unaltered photo-_reproductions' as art12' - By social practice are assaulted by an· onrush of informa- the IT) id-eighties, the shapes and formu l ~s of ' fractal tion. "Reception," Walter 12_enjamin wrote' as early as geometry had begun to_ appear in the work of practicing-1936, is "in la state of distraction, which is increasingly artists. But forces other tha,.n the discourse of seience

' noticeable in all fielps of art and is symptomatic' of pro- ;seem to have prepared the ground for the_expropriation J ound_chang,es in apperception .. · . . .!!1 Faced with the of its latest images and ideas. , __, - 1

demands of new computer and video technologies, we · , , I ' ' \ collectively confront a quantum leap in the state of dis- The term "fractal," a variant of "fractional ," points to t he traction identified by Benjamin as a _corollary of the idea both of fragmentation and irreg-ularity. An emerg-1

emergence of film and photography. Leisure tim§.,_ ing branch of geometry, the study of fractals breaks work, and art, our -bodies and so also our selves - all ·,_with the Euclidean tradition-of idealized forms. With an '

- are absorbed .into tne breathing and buzzing surreality , infinite nesting of . pattern w.it hin patt~rn. repeati ng _of simulation culture, of global information networks _ across scales, fractal images open-onto an area -de,void

and cybernetic machines. , - , of fix,ed coordinates . Because the mathematical opera-

"Chaos science" is an umbrella t erm fo r two related and eme~ging f ields: fractal geometry and the study_ of

, complex dynamical systems. If its computer,-generated .yideo graphics strike in us a 'sympathe,t ic chord - J -images of a randomized geometry and 1 syste~ s in cl;laotic states - perhaps it is because of our imme,r-.

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tions that produce fractal "landscapes" depend on the introduction of chance (random number generati on), each repetition of a given pattern asserts a fract ional difference frcfm all others. The notion of ,boundary, too, is confounded. On· closer look, th~ line dividing two regions reveals unexpected complexity. In the lit-erature , this is sometimes expressed as th e

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"competition of several cente(s for, domination of the torical periods into one 'uneasy, o-pen -form n arrative -plane'': ·· area. ,Arbitrary in relation to "p'lot, " the pie¢e faste'ns

1 • instead on the · cracks and fi°ssures of each ·source -

Oc ca sionaU y a third compe t-i to_r -p rofits the Salem' witch trials b'y ·way of Arthur Mill er, . the .. . ·f n ;>m the .d is pute of two others- t o es t a b- - . -

. · l rs h - its a r ea ~r' influe ric e . It ca n [a lso ] - Senate- McCarthy hearings,- the life and times of h a 'ppe·n th a t o n e c e nte r do m in at-es t he ~ -l Timothy. Leary T""" simultaneously sit uating itself in the enti r ,e plan:e _: o ut the re a~e still ... is o ~ technological present. On a stage set with multiple

' la ted [are i s] whi c h a r e n o t ,su §jected t o video monitors, an array of microphones and. other its- a ttrac tio n.3 - ' ~· ' · electronics, with. actors insistently attached to texts of a ··, · · _ \ - ;;-_ variEiltY of kina s .{playscripts, books -of the period, tran-

The richness of- the fractal ·"c:tomaio aris'es larg~Jy , out of __ scripts, a ,Walkman the audience cannot hear), L.S.D. these "border skirmishes." ~ 1 ~ stead of a clear line· of cranks up the values of the different dramatic variables demarcation, ' one_J inds an endless re'gress of detail > to th'e point w here ' the piece implodes, discharging a - I ~ surfaces that give way on inspection to more surface, oarrage of gibberish, buzze r.s, and- accusations, testi- . - -;; boundaries that ne'ver ,resolve. . · . - · . - -· · IJlOny of all. types, wails, documents flung into the, air . -~ - 0

' ·_ ' _ ~- _l. and danciog.- But that is only the end of Part II. Parts ~-As pOstniodernism , poststr-ucturalism, -multi-cUltural ques- 111 and_ IV qnwind .into what~might , be called an altogeth- . ~

- tionings of th (3 tanon r feminism, post-linear historiography,- er other, phas:e space, .a pandemonium whose tempo is · ~ I anq npw· eveJ1 a post-Euclidean geometry wreak havo-c at- on_c.e el egiac and un,nerving, a strangely ordered < ~ i with received -habits of ·thougflt ~and practice ac-ross-=:_a ' entropy-poised at the eage of

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~ariety of fields; -a pictu r~J of cultural -ruptufe present::; - · gr , -: )g'>,{ · .A .: ' __ ~ . itself, patterned and pockmarked by complex compet1- tfl'u~?ff ia4e 1~ , _ - ,

tfons· for domination of the,plane. BuUor-ces other than Complexity scien'ce is to time in the physica,1- sciences ' those of "d!§course" either in the scif;lnces-or in the .arts as fractal geome try is to space: - in ' t~e ter ms of Thomas wou.!Q seem 1 to have_ prepared tHe ground for such a -Kuhn, a "revolutio·n," an exc ~ an,ge of operative cultaral irift: . J- · ". · : / ~ . _,-· · ' ·. paradigms. 0 With its concentration-on the pr:_operties of

_/I £? ,. ) fluid. ·motion, it-1·oins together 1 field~ whose common J/'t;li4~ ,m wh.aw . ' •)' ( - ~ ~ .. ~ > J ~_,- - _, - them~_ is ·the .. study of flows of ' intormatio,n ·-=-- -weather·

"I· wanted-to break -it down slowly in the course -eHh-e patterns~ population growth, epidemiology, prices on piece ; :.. s'ays Wooster Group - director Elizabeth=-the ~ international . f:lxchang.e, but also brain ·waves, .the

6

~ Lecompte of- the 1984-5 productionLS.D. (. .. Just the :-- pumping_ action of the heart, stel laf osc) llations. A ll are -High .f?oints : . .}, "to let it disin_tegrate over 'time. The open, dissipative -systems, meaning that t ~ ey take in structure of L.S.D. would be the disintegration of The , energy from outside which leaves i_n the fo rm of heat, Cruc{b/e,-linguis_tically.",CThe second work in the trilogy and -thpt they generat~ entropy, the measu! e o.f diso.I_der "The Roaa .to Immortality," L.S~ o. slams its audience that accumulates . Like fracta l" geometry,- complexity

~J_nto· ail exped(:mtial register in which the stakes of -the . science · rel ies on computer technology . to produce its' deconstructive-·enterpris·e, it.s jolts and spasms ~. become simulations of physipal systems. These ~ue generally 1

concrete:- L.S.D. maps three stories from as many his- of two types: phase space ,. which· plots the sut cessive - \ - - .I

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mination. It cou ld be said t hat if the system seems alt or explode from a periodic orbit into a chaotic ime, once it has reached the wider region that cribes the limit of its strange attractor, it implodes as ettles onto" its new orbit, exhibiting an oddly com-ing property of stable instability, predictable unpre-ability, determinate indeterminacy: deterministic

~e -fi?rmiiny o/°t?flfjeJtt !J;icletewminao;J his 1903 study, "T h e Three Body Problem in estial Mechanics," Henri Poincare argued that o n

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"competition of several cente'(s for- domination 0 plane": ·-

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. . 1 1~p -·· its are a ~( in ( lue ii.'h. It can [also] .:- l:_i_a ppe"n th a t o ne c e nte r do m inate s th e .

enti,re pl an:e.-:-out there a'i-e still ." . . iso ~ I .

l a t~d [a re ::{s ] wh ich a i:e n o t ~ ubj e cted t o i ~s- att r ac t ion .s · - · · -::.'

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The ri~1hness of t?e ~r~btal ·dopiaiJ. ; ris'es la~eJy 1 q these .· border sk1rm1shes. " ll n~tead ,of a clear m~ demarcation , .. one -finds an endless regress of d surfac~s. that giv8' way on inspection to · more su boundaries th~t nev er ,resolve. ' .. - :-· ~

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As postmodern ism, poststructuralism~ multi-cUltural -· tio_nings of _th f3 canon ~ femini~m '. _ ~os !:- linear historiog ~ an~ npw· eve"n a post-Euclidean geometry wreak rl with received 0 habits of thought ,and practice acr~ ~ariety of -fields ;' -a picture.P ot cu1tural -ru-p1ure pre~

_itself, patterned and pockmarked · by complex coai . _ tions .fo.r domi.n.ation of 1he1plane. BuUo~ces othe ~ · those of "d~course" either in the sci_ences-or in th~ . wou19 __ SE;lem> to have_ prepared th~ ground for su

culturait,rift: . u-:- · J - _. 1 '

l I ) _,: _ .' - · ~' _ v;ftde;;torW<!_'4 fl!taro _.,~ _, _ .

' "I: wanted ,to break -it down s"lowly in the course .(! . · piece ;':_ says· Wooste r Group - director -Eliz a' ' , L~<_2ompte of- the 1984-5 productionT_,s .o. (. '. .Ju~

H1gh -,Points.:.), "to let it disin_tegrate ovei -time. j

1 stru~ture of L.S.D. would be the disintegration o1 Cracib/e,-linguis_tically."C The second work in"' the t /i "The Roael to Immortality," L.S-: D. slams its audi

__J_nto· an experj ential register in which the stakes d . _ d~constructive-:-enterpris·e, its jolts and spasms,, be

coric~ete:- L.S.D. maps three stories from as man . ' -

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states (or phases) of a system in an abstract "multidi-mensional" space, and sophisticated linear graphs (bifurcation diagrams).

Phase space has as many "dimensions" as a given system has degrees of freedom, with each variable (heat, speed, viscosity, for example) functioning as a coordinate. A point in phase space represents the total state of the system at a particular point in time. If a dissipative system runs out of steam, its course through phase space spirals to a point, where it stops. If instead it moves periodically through th e same sequence of states, it traces a periodic orbit (or limit cycle). In each case, the system has been attracted to a certain figure in phase space, in the first instance, a fixed point attractor, in the second, a limit cycle.

With a dramatic increase in the value of the variable(S) driving the system, however, the course through phase space can suddenly leave the limit cycle, jump-ing to a wider region of phase space, circulating wildly. This phase transition marks the onset of turbulence where prediction proves impossible. In phase space: however, its trajectory careens through a region that gradually, surprisingly, begins to take shape. It will never visit the same point twice, but traces an intricate path:

The d e licacy i s o f a r a ther s p e cifi c kind . . . . [A] ny se c t io n of such a n attracto r, whe n blown up , revea ls i tself t o be jus t a s e x quisite ly detai led a s was the la rge r p ic-tu re fro m which it was t ake n . . .. [T]he re is an infinite r e gress o f detail , a neve r e nd-in g n es t i n g o f patte rn withi n p a ttern ... . s

!he shape is fractal, and its formation in phase space 1s often compared with the repeated stretching and folding of dough. This plastic, topological transforma-

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tion of phase space characterizes the third class of phase space f igures. The system has found its strange attractor and entered a chaotic regime.

Concentra t ing on phase transitions, the study of dynamical systems notes a more or less abrupt change of behavior as some parameter - "degree of freedom" - reaches a critical value. Linear tempo ral flow is translated into a figura l dimension. Wrapping infinite difference into a bounded region of phase space, the strange attractor twists and wraps and jumps and creases endlessly, n ot tending toward a final

culmination . It cou ld be said t hat if the system seems to jolt or explode from a periodic orbit into a chaotic regime, once it has reached the wider region that describes the limit of its strange attractor, it implodes as it "settles onto" its new orbit, exhibiting an oddly com-pelling property of stable instability, predictable unpre-dictability, determinate indeterminacy : deterministic chaos.

0%e fi?{)/}Ju/Ji,ff o/°1?111&it .Au:leteJVJJu/JUUY!J In his 1903 study, "Th e Three Body Problem in Celestial Mechanics ," Henri Poincare argued that on

mathematical grounds Newton's laws of planetary motion overstated the case for the stability of the solar system. (Underscoring the extent to which these ideas contradicted dominant theory, Poincare himself set aside his findings, saying: "These things are so bizarre that I cannot bear to contemplate them. ")S While the laws held good for a system of just two bodies , the introduction of a third has the poten-tial of destabilizing the system and rendering orbits erratic, unpre-dictable. In the network of orbits, hysteresis is induced, denoting the failure of a system to return to its more tranquil state once the cause of the change in its behavior has been removed. Be that as it may, two ideas appear in Poincare's study that were to form the corner-stones of complexity science under the rubric "sensitive dependence." There is a fundamental indeterminacy or uncertainty in our knowledge of the conditions of a given system at a given point in time. Second, this uncertainty (construed as a necessary "error" in measurement) has the capacity of growing exponentially, overtaking an orderly evolution of the system. Small perturbations may be ampli-fied, eradicating the possibility of long-range prediction.

Deterministic chaos contradicts fundamental assump-tions about the linkage between determinism and pre-dictability: there is a rule governing the system, but instead of generating an ordered series, it generates unpredictable behavior with a high degree of complexi-

ty. If such ideas presaged a "revolution" to science of the 1960s, they were already informin,g compositional practice in the arts by the 1 ~sos. The work of John Cage, in particular, is exemplary in this regard.

In a lecture on "Indeterminacy," delivered in 1958 and published in the collection Silence in 1961, Cage argues that "[t]o ensure indeterminacy with respect to its performance, a composition must be determinate of itself."? Here, a per-former "responds to cues" rather than to an ordinary score; he or she is provided with a set of rules and a repertoire of possible responses:

The function of each per-former .. . is comparable to that of a traveler who must constant l y be catching trains the departures of which have not been announced but which are in the process of being announced. He must be cont inu ally ready to go, alert to the situation, and responsible . I f he notices no cu e, that fact itself is a cue ... (p. 39).

Composition becomes a determinate operation for gen-erating randomness and complexity, as the effect of new social and technological habits are registered on the compositional field. In fact, Cage compares the performer with "a photographer who on obtaining a camera uses it to take a picture. The composition per-mits an infini te number of these ... " (p. 36). Emphasis

strange attractor. By an alternate means of computer diagram, complexity science finds that this leap in fact leads through the scenario of period-doubling: points of stability become unstable as the value of a given variable is raised, and split into two. At a critical point, the period-doubling reaches an extreme degree and gives way to the bifurcation cascade, the threshold that marks the onset of turbulence. "Chaos is sponta-neously generated, creating randomness from purely deterministic origins."s In phase space, an elegant, filigreed struc-tu ra I stability emerges; bifurcation diagrams, however, give a different twist to the story. Once the system has entered a chaotic regime, windows of order arise spontaneously. In the midst of entropy, a self-ordering principle appears. The tendency of dissipative systems toward ever-increasing disorder is displaced by intermittent calls to order, emanating from within the horizons of the chaotic.

In the nonlinearity of the equations, a kind of irrational drive takes hold. Uncertainty increases until ultimately "there is simply no causal connection between past and future. "9 The through-line of causality gives way:

Every nonlinear rule leads to branch points, to forkings in the path at which the sys-tem may take one branch or another. Decisions are made whose consequences cannot be

mathematical grounds Newton's laws of plane motion overstated the case for the stability of the ~ system. (Underscoring the extent to which these ic contradicted dominant theory, Poincare himself aside his findings, saying: "These things are bizarre that I cannot bear to contemplate them While the laws held good for a system of just two bodies, the introduction of a third has the poten-tial of destabilizing the system and rendering orbits erratic, unpre-dictable. In the network of orbits, hysteresis is induced, denoting the failure of a system to return to its more tranquil state once the cause of the change in its behavior has been removed. Be that as it may, two ideas appear in Poincare 's study that were to form the corner-stones of complexity science under the rubric "sensitive dependence." There is a fundamental indeterminacy or uncertainty in our knowledge of the conditions of a given system at a given point in time. Second, this uncertainty (construed as a necessary "error" in :J.' . ' .. measurement) has the capacity of growing exponentially, overtaking an orderly evolution of the system. Small perturbations may be ampli-fied , eradicating the possibility of long-range predic1

Deterministic chaos contradicts fundamental assu tions about the linkage between determinism and dictability: there is a rule governing the system, instead of generating an ordered series, it gener unpredictable behavior with a high degree of comp

is thrown onto composition as process, through an appeal to operations that enable the performer to "let go of his feelings , his taste, his automatism, his sense of the universal," and to identify instead with "no matter what eventuality" (p. 39).

Cage concludes with a commentary on the changing nature of time, terming it "a watch which moves not mechanically but variably":

The mus ical r e co gnition o f the nece s-s ity o f time is tard y with respec t to the recogniti o n of t ime on th e p a r t o f b r o a d ca s t com m unications, r a dio , tele -v is io n , not t o mentio n ma g netic tape, n o t to mentio n travel b y a ir, d e parture s a nd a r rivals from n o m a tte r w h a t p o int a t no m a tte r w hat time, to no m a tter what point at no m a tte r w h a t time , not to mention te lephony ... (p. 40).

Collapsing, folding, and stretching in what is practically a spatia/ization, time takes on a new plasticity, becom-ing a clock whose movements "it is not possible to foresee." The "urgency and indeterminacy" of Cagean improvisation - of composition as process - is here plotted onto a horizon shaped by the demands of an emerging technology. One could almost say that the lecture "Indeterminacy" constitutes a call for cultural performers "alert to the situation, and responsible." If Cage's particular topic is musical composition "indeterminate with respect to its performance," his dis-cussion provides a neat summary of various attitudes and approaches to improvisation, irrespective of the media involved.

In phase space, as we saw, the trajectory of a system entering a chaotic state leaps suddenly and erratically outside its periodic limit cycle, and into the region of its

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strange attractor. By an alternate means of computer diagram, complexity science finds that this leap in fact leads through the scenario of period-doubling: points of stability become unstable as the va lue of a given variable is raised, and split into two . At a critical point, the period-doubling reaches an extreme degree and gives way to the bifurcation cascade, the threshold that marks the onset of turbulence . "Chaos is sponta-neously generated, creating randomness from purely deterministic origins ."B In phase space, an elegant, filigreed struc-tural stability emerges; bifurcation diagrams, however , give a different twist to the story. Once the system has entered a chaotic regime, windows of order arise spontaneously. In the midst of entropy, a se lf-ordering principle appears. The tendency of dissipative systems toward ever-increasing disorder is displaced by intermittent calls to orde r, emanating from within the horizons of the chaotic.

In the nonlinearity of the equations, a kind of irrational d r ive takes hold . Uncertainty increases until ultimately "there is simply no causal connection be t ween past and future."9 The through-line of causality gives way:

Every nonline a r ru l e l ea ds to branc h points, to forkings in th e path at which the sys -tem may take o ne branch or a nother. D ecisions are made whose consequences cannot be

predicted, because each deci-sion has the character of an amplification.

The smallest differences are blown up and have far-reaching effects. Causality holds at every instant, but it doesn't carry over a sequence of branchings.IO

Deterministic chaos offers a model of change for which our current vocabulary is conspicuously lacking: development, evolution, advancement, progress, even unfolding (though this seems to approach the idea) all carry with them the sense of a final cause toward which each intervening event tends. Other than these, we have digression, deviation, deflection, departures, swerves, and lapses - terms to which Foucault in fact looked for describing what, in the action of history, he also called "the singular randomness of events."11

%wjwMiB o/ a 07'~-./µt Ju6fad The highwater mark of process art came and went with the seventies. Traversing a dispersal of the aes-thetic (in a move somewhat misleadingly dubbed "dematerialization"), artistic practice re-emerged in an expanding field of market operations and speculation. A realm of increasingly conspicuous consumption, it is also - and equally conspicuously - one of "investment" (sometimes even entertainment), pure and simple . What appeared in theory as a clean break with the modernist past, emerges in practice as a tangle of diverse operations, often dragging criticism itself into the fray of finely wrought "transactions."

In the case of Cage's lecture, situated within the cultural moment of the late fifties, the horizon of the aesthetic arena was characterized by a bewildering

onslaught of demands, of information and new tech-nologies. The corresponding transformation of regular, measured time into a plastic, even spastic flow, seemed to broadcast crucial compositional implica-tions. By now, in the late eighties, the state of technology has drastically changed. In the place of Cage's almost quaint "telephony," we have telecommu-

nications, an ever-increasing yield of new and newer technologies: the

· + · portability and per-,,,_ _____ , vasiveness of

video cam-corders and global MTV - but also computer networks, cash machines,

fl call waiting, fiber optics, world news tonight or at any time of day, memory chips and microelectronics, computerized checkout counters, laser discs, the promised arrival of

HDTV and the suddenly ubiquitous Fax, computerized trading on the international exchange. The number of cues and available options, to borrow Cage's only partly metaphoric model, has multiplied at an almost exponential rate. With this, time seems not so much to flow forward as to eddy and swirl, proceed by jump-cuts, both backward into the future and forward into the past.

As art entered the eighties, no sooner had opposing

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-streams pf neo-expressionism and picture theory art ~ been identified - each with a more-or-le~s

programmatic logic of semantic flows and valences peculiarly its own - than a third tributary came inh view. 12 While artists of the first group entrenched themselves in the fixed.::.point of an individualism , al ready - in actuality exhausted, those of the second

\have circled the grounds of art on a vigilant, strategic --nightwatch of appropriation, arrayed against the r~ify­

ing imperatives of practices of representation. The 11 introducti on of this third "body" of artists, however, run-

ning the gamut from "ne9 geo" to commodity art, from ,post-appropriation simulation to a quasi-conceptual (and yet emotionally charged) environmen_talism , h~s

1 worked to destabilize the entire system,. ' '/ I -,

The,trajectory of art history, proceeding in the past by way of incremental alternations between classic and - 1 baroque, abstraction and re.presentation - a series, in short, of bifurcations - stepped up tfie tempo of its oscillations to the point where, in the eighties, alterna-tion gaye way t.o a kind of cascade of "post" and "neo'.~

_· / sty listic · variations. on the shoals of a collapsing ; capacity for -critical dist ance,' the course of art has

- / churned and scattered - carrying criticism 'with it, which perhaps·' is the worst example :- passing into an _) arbitrary , flux of for r:nal ana conceptual mutations, of

- "hyper- simulated critical forms " and "hybrid neutralizationS."13 1 -

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The discourse of postmodernism sets up within ,the aesthetic a sftuation of extreme urgen_cy and i'ndetermi-nacy. _Now mar~ than eJer, as the1y say on T. V.; we would s.eem to feel the force of Cage's_call for per:form-ers in the aesthetic cum cultural arena with "a mind in -or:ie piece." In art as' in criticism , we have w,itnessed the esca lation of a turmoil_. often highly theoretical in form and inflection. Witt} its art malls , uncertain frames

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f the plain , this turbulence of ible" with itself, with a:rt, and course in . the arts have col-

- ong -frozen moment1 which to' ihvoke outmoded models :ensitized to the comple is__ities rs, and critics alike find their ice past and the demands ·Of the new "real estate '.' of art.

: speaking, on the one hand, · ·earn of artists), and, on the ~concludes that "finally_both -

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loop, fueling 1es a phase >le and split ~ime . Wildly inuous', hys-

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iversibility. "22 points to the has inde'ed flowing 'the

' , >ductive and space, over-Jmetr'ies of, a ilations, sub-11e to a logic - in,particular information. )y -EFic -A1l iez ir of Capital," revolts of the

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predicte d , b ecau se eac h dec i-sion h a s t h e c h a racter of a n amplificat ion .

The s m a llest differe nces a r e blo w n up a n d h ave far-reachi ng e ffects . C a u sa li ty holds a t every in s t a nt , but it d o e sn't c a rry o ve r a seque n ce of b r anchin g s .10

Deterministic chaos offers a model of change for our current vocabulary is conspicuously lac development, evolution, advancement, progress, unfolding (though this seems to approach the ide carry with them the sense of a final cause to which each intervening event tends. other than t we have digression , deviation , deflection, depart swerves, and lapses - terms to which Foucault in looked for describing what, in the action of histor also called "the singular randomness of events."11

1/eewjwvn/4 o/ a ?7 ?<i/14-J/dd ../ u/fed The highwater mark of process art came and with the seventies. Traversing a dispersal of the thetic (in a move somewhat misleadingly dub "dematerialization"), artistic practice re-emerged i1 · expanding field of market operations and specula A realm of increasingly conspicuous consumpti is also - and equally conspicuously - on "investment" (sometimes even entertainment), and simple. What appeared in theory as a c break with the modernist past , emerges in practic a tangle of diverse operations, often dragging criti itself into the fray of finely wrought "transactions. "

In the case of Cage's lecture , situated within .....,:~-~~ cultural moment of the late fifties, the horizon of aesthetic arena was characterized by a bewild

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Of reference, and wilgly complex competitions for domination of the plain, this turbulence of tongues is ofien apparently and willfully, "permanentlYi incpmpatible" with itself, with art, and most .c,ertainly with' its audience.14 Ratioriar practi0e and discourse in . the arts have col-laps!3d ·across ,. a threshold, at the extreme limit of that lo~g-froz~n moment, which

_circumscribes the projects of modernipm. Too sophisticated 1 to ihvoke outmoded models ' (othe~~than with the flourish of a high- ironic style), profoundly sensitized to the comple )5j ties and uncertainties oL current conditions in culture, artists, curators, and critics alike find their loyalties torn,_divided between

1 the paradigm Qf a cr itical practice past and the demands ·Of

the marketplace, with "value" itself glorified -and jeopardized by the new "real estate" of art. ~ . -

In 1986, Hal Foster wrote that art today is "a mixed enterprise": speaking, on the one hand, of the appropiationist critique of representation (the second strea~ of artists), and, -On th~ otrer, of post-appropriation simulationism (among the third). ~he con9ludes that "finally_both -' \ '1 \

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may_ be but ram.ifications of a much more sp.lit subje,ct, on which his \=)ntire conclusion, r 1

practical and thorough '_c_riUque' and 'simula- turns .. - Calling attention atthe outset-to the ti"on,'._ , - _ that ' of capital.: 15 . Her_e, even -special!y sensitive nature of our position at

:._."endgame" strateg_Les no longer hold. The the end of a millenniul)l, the essay ) op.ens range and extent of our presen,t-djfficulty can '!'ith a critique of < apocalyptic -pron'oun'ce-perhaps best be measured b'y1 reference Jo ments: "th~re is no single paradigm 'of the -:> g

- the ex·hibition catalogue Endgame, where · apo_calypti'c,." . it a~monishes, "in each Yves-Alain Bois close$ the essay; "~ainting: inst_?nce, one must exam in~ th~ tone·:of the _ \, .g The Task oJ Mourning, " with a signally apocalyptic discourse."1 ! rhe ' solution, ~ -opaque · definition- of painting's new "npn--- Jtrough_., thar the -el?s.ay..,.offers, as the way out _ ~ ~ pathologi9al" task, taken here as a token _for of an a~sthetic _dead -end -~ this ·;conjunc- -~-. ~ artistic pr,actice in gener,al: - · · tive deconstruction" of that which "modernist , 0 , ~

- , -. .:_ .·~·- _ . · ,\ · ·- - '' · - · painting ".-· has rent into three ' l Pa1 p tmg m1gl~t ~ot ----~ - only serves to heighten ;;>

- b~ dead . Its vitality the very anxie_ty that the for- - ~ ' will only be tested mulation would seem -to~ - u once we are cured of - . k t ·11 • · - ' ~ 1 ,- 3 our mania::..a~d our • _see o-a ay. ' \ _g ,

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.\. ' ing wil1- 1:merge in i) ae1sjfietic _(sometimes to the ~

-;... the , 1~ orijun(:_rive . pointofshrjllnes$) .asitua- £ -d-econstruction of, "' ::! ' tiort of extreme urgency and ·~

~-fhe three ins tances \ i I} d et e rm i n a · c y· . ~I - ~~ -which· moderni· s ~ . ' Contemplating tile break- _j :2 paint i ng has dis- _ . down of "a _crisis-_!Deritality '. ~

-·associated (the imaginary, t_he r·ea1- and a crisis-parad!gm,~_Collins & Milazzo and- the sy mbolic), but predi_qions - have written, in a similar vein, of "a.geophys--

- are made to . be .... wJ.:Ong. 16 ~~' · ical, Yi"irtually funereal, link between the 0

-- · - · -! -_ - interhal domain of- the dying Subject and 'the Subjectivity has recently ,suffered, 'theereti- ' external rea_lm of the definitive·· but

1callV speaking, assaults from three sides: transcendentally depleted Object.~1_? _ Now _ E . .c ;;> _, c that 'of the-j..acanian- split subject1; that Of a- - more _than .: ev_gr yte would _seem to feel the

-:.ne_o-Mar.xis't "internalized contradictions" of force · ot_Cagf:'.~S call for performers with ('a ·capital, and th?t of a Foucaultian critique 9f \ mind in ·o_ne ij:>iece"! , ·As K~thy Halbre.ich ·subjectivity; Bois clev~_rJy colla'pses the no,tes of the Wooster. Group (calling t~eir viewpoint of this -currently standard thi:ee- werk a "three-dimensional collage ~in real and foi'd critique into one, ·parenthetically triply- electronic time\');- "this hybrid .reflects the dis-,

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tracted and convoluted ways .. .we communicate," the history of the economy. Driven by an expdnential rise "day's barrage ' of simLJltaneous, often contradictory, ___ in the rvalue of the single variable ,"technological

, information."19 The stat~ of s·ubjecthood (albeit defined developm~ nt" (operating in a.· feedback loop, fueling he re in _dualistic terms) would seem to have been ~ itself), 'Ruelle's economic model- undergoes a phase iFrev-ocably shattered - -fragmented1 and fras;tured :::- -transition. As periodic cycles grow unstable and split carrying with it, so it appe;:i.rs, the field of(art as we_know into two, the' economy enters a chaotic regime. Wildly it. Effort? such --§S that to rehpbilitate the 1sublime, with unpredictable , loc~lly - turbulent-;-' discootinuous,..J}ys-terms like "8.9stmodem," '"technological," and even terefic': - it is globally "stable" at the same time, a· "hysterical' tacked on~to modify sublimity, only serve to changEl in ~tate that is also, irreversably,. _a change in underscore the dissolution of' subjectivity accomplishe,d phase space shape. - , at the onset of this -new regime.20 ' ' · ·' ' ~

"Turbulent motion," writes Robert Shaw in "Strange fihadtc ~f!Jme0 : ~ __ ....:. Attractors, Chaotic Behavior, and

Ec~nomics borrows~its notions - of Information flow," is "governed by "flow~ from physics, and with th?t its information generajed contiouously

~~ mathematics;- and from the beginning -out of the flow itself. .. prec-lud[ing] , ~ has been bound_ 1,1p ,with the develop- botb predictability and reversibility."22 , ~ !/ me_nt of ~omplex~ty scien~e.;_ lr a fig~- - _ Ruelle's economic aside points to the

o ' rat1ve aside from the ' ma1n line of his ide~ that capitallsm ~ ha-s ind'e'ed .' -~ J argumeN ; _i_n the a_rti ple "strange "° changed lshape, ; overflowing 'the \ ,; - Attractors,'~1the -mathematical physi- boundaries between productive and

cist David Ruelle offers a provocative reproducti-ve or leisure s_pace, over-. .,.l ~ picture of an ecoro'11i

1cs irlformed- by " flowing the 'Euclidean , geometries ofra

~~ the science of chaos': - fixed system of social relations, s8b~ >. " ~ " ~ c " . .c u

,-One imagcines · easil,y that --=< suming the1

entirety of-time to a logic \_, -, _ of maximum circulation - in.particu lar

strange attractors may play a ' J • 1 the almost instantaneous circulation~'of information. rol1e in eeenomics, ,where periodic processes Following ~he line of_argument develop·ed brfaic -A1liez (economic Gycles) ~re _well 'known. In fc;i.ct_,,,iet and Michel __ Feher in their es~ay, "The Luster of Capital,"

\ us suppose1 that the macroeconomical evolu-. • . ' 1 • 'Jllis transformation stems in part from the revolts· of the

,- tion equations contain a parameter µ, sixties, and brings with it ai reneg'otiatio,n of the terms -describing, ,_sa,y, ,the level of t13chnological the narrative terms - in which capitalism is conceived:

- ' development. 1 B_y analogy with hydroaynamics , _ , - ~ _ __ -. W~ would- guess that for small µ,-/ periodic Or /_ - [A]n economic crisis always appears quasiperiodic tyclJs may develop. For high µ, J as an _abnormal (situation inevitably chaotic behavior with sensitive dependence on Jeacyng ·to an after-CFisis: either a initial conditions would be 'present. 21 "healthy';_capitalism or the advent of

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This ,"metaphofrcal , but ... suggestive" model implies_ ,something like a quantum leap into a n'ew phase in tile

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- economic activ ity- and of a ne.w· !'egime ~loop processes , in_teractions,- commun i---of ca-pita.r accumulation . .. 1tends- to 1 cat ions network-s, a·nd so forth. Pe·r haps tu r:n this .so-called "cris is:' into an ordi- ouri in a'bi li ty to ~hi _nk in _terms ~ f net-nary, if not permanent state· of affairs.23 works is due j n n o sma ll me~sure to our -

- ' ~ - 1 restriction to the descriptive sys'tem of_ ' What gathered and took shape in th_e guise of .a crisis, verbal l anguage.~s .

promising ~o pass fo a resolution, ' arrives instead; tilS a < ,_ -

Hquidation of the very tin:]e-space pf capitali~t social Our colle~tiv~ incapacity for , thinking "in terms of net- ...:::.... re·lations. An apocalyptic model gives way to a new . w,or-ks" is only equalled ,by th-e_ earne'stness of o ur format ion, sett ing-the stage ·for a sea change -in-the_ cli- · efforts to do so, as if_- the patterns -traced by technology mate qt -culture. Humans and machines _become equiv- . itself served as a kind oT figural key to-) n emerging alent, "assimilat[ed] ... as cogwheels or r elays in a vast mode of social and economic exchange.26 ·Witness; for machiniQ network _ fort he productive circulation of, example, our concerted conversion to an 'ideology of

J' information" (p : 316). ~ ~ "networking," with its own analogous operations of _ ·. " , _ , . "flows," "loo·p processes," hum?h cogs or relays, and

In Making a New Scj ence, James Gleick describE?S the . vexed OL digitized -'\nteractiolis ." 0 ( again, consider "r~volutio~" chaos science ha$wl'ought, in the fields of /· the'- luminous ~Lit ! ea_IJY, rudimentary --d,epi.ctio~s of . -sc1ence ,.. 1n terms that may be as inadvertent as they ~T&T',s global 1nformatmh networ,!<, with its imaginary~

~ -appear-apt: "One account of nat ure replaces another. · circu .i t~-e:smo'othly humming. We _might, th\Jl!Qh, also Old problems are seen in ·a' new light and other prob- consider one last proposition from Alliez and Eeher. ' In I ems are recognized for-the 'first time. I Something takes ' this eme,rging phase~ they argue, capi'talism "leads to place thp:t resembles a' whole industry ret001ing for a the dereliptlon' of people a_!:ld space~-that cannot be new productioo."24 The metaphor is striking , · and ~ its ~plugged in' to the netwo ck'~ ·(p . 3. \ 6) ., It is1in these .. implications ~are at one and the -fill.me time exhilarating-1 '.'vaGant spaces' and .bodies . . . only affected by the flow · and frightening . . ·In an essay contrib-1.ited to th_e of waste,d time" that the true-. chaos of the cultural . \-catalogue for the Goethe House exhibition, Frontiers of moment would be seen to resid'e.27 · -

' Chaos, Herbert Franke all but argues· 1~hat the c1Jltural ~-1

fundion of the new science ,- 1 of fractal graphic.s . and - , In 1987, qn issue of, File Megazine (sic) appeared, enti-phase $pg._ce maps -:-is ,tutorial in sutf.tle, cybernetic, - tied "The Journal of the · New. Mortality: Mourning ·aJ'1d

-> and far-reaching ways: .· -- \ _ .-.-_Melancholia." Tne edito ri al~ introduction by G,eneral / - _ ·:,.,,_ Idea notes: . "In the current situ.ation we are a11 ·strug- - ,

1 I.f-· we -employ. l anguag~ as aj mean.s of gling t~ develop a vi ~~ual language which can-cope ~h comm u n1caL1on, a 11 near med 1 um the demands of the moment" - the demands that is of arra i:i ged as a ti'me-series, ~e -automat- ' , I a m'Oment in Which loSSeS and ChaOS 'Of al/ kinds h~ve' -ica l,ly favor l.in ela1;,'or~anizi:i? ~rinciples, ca1i'ed, i nto question· the .ground on' whic)J aesthetic -e._g. causa li t y or historical pro~e-s· s. practice in the past has relied.28 From the collapse of

.Visual .langu a ges a llow_ t~s on the other ~the aufonomy of the aesthetic, ar.tistic' pr actice (and han~ to ~ee . t h ose v~ry 1:-n portant con- even' the exhausted, highly suspect art obje(;t) . re-nections which manifest themse lve_s as -':.. emerges at once hum l:l led -and.~exalted in its. status as a -

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paradigm of "interest" and "investment." In a dispersed arena of speculation and charged electronic transfers, of corporate sponsorship ar:d governmental control, the issue for art seems to grow increasingly urgent and indeterminate. "Distraction .. " Walter Benjamin wrote as early as 1 936:

and concentration form polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. . .. In con-trast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art. ... The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.29

Benjamin argues that "the tasks which face the human apparatus at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation, alone." With a newly-inflected emphasis on processes of circulation and production, art becomes a mea-sure of the shift in apperception, but also takes on the difficult function of distracting our collective state of distraction.

The exponential increase in the value of the cultural variable, technology, gives to Benjamin's "absent-mindedness" an unexpected spin:

Dear Reader:

When you need information to help you make important decisions in your life, where do you find it? How do you even know what's out there? And, how can you get your hands on it, fast? 3 0

If the new science offers a set of seeing-eye tools for transiting to an unimagined form of collective subjective experience, the question concerning technology remains one of who is absorbing whom. Artistic practice is issued a strange new challenge, a kind of awful but domestic imperative. While there is no ordinary score, a determinate array of strategies makes itself available, as a figure in phase space begins to take shape. At once elegant and unpredictable - elegiac perhaps, unnerving - it is a "venture" that does not progress, but instead cycles endlessly on an erratic orbit, shot through with the energy of saturated video graphics, exerting a well-nigh disconcerting and mesmeric appeal.

<ff,;utnote,;

1. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction ," in Hannah Arendt, editor, Illuminations: Walter Benjamin (New York: Schocken Books, 1969). pp. 217-252, p. 240.

2. Frontiers of Chaos, see note #3. See also excerpts from Gary Indiana's review of the exhibition , reprinted below.

3. Peitgen and Richter, "Frontiers of Chaos," in Frontiers of Chaos: Computer Graphics Face Complex Dynamics, exhibition catalogue (Bremen: Forschungsgruppe Konplexe Dynamik, Universitat Bremen, 1985). pp. 61 -100, pp. 72, 66.

4. Elizabeth Lecompte, interview with David Savran, in David Savran, Breaking the Rules: The Wooster Group (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1986), p. 195.

5. Douglas R. Hofstadter, "Metamagical Themas: Strange Attractors, " Scientific American 245, no. 5 (November 1981 ): 22-41 ; 37.

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6. Henri Poincare quoted in John Briggs and F. David Peat, Turbulent Mirror: An Illustrated Guide to Chaos Theory knd the Science of Wholeness (New York: Harper & Row~ 19B9), p. 29. · · ' -

- _ 7. John Cage, "Indeterminacy," the second of three lectures on "Compositi9!1 ," in Silence: Lectures !'nd Writings by John Cage (Middletown : Weslyn University Press, 1961 ), pp. 35-40, p. 38. · _, B. David Campbell et al., "Experimental Mathematics: The Role of Computation in Nonlinear Science," Communications of the ACM 2B, no. 4 (April 19B5): 374-3B4; 377. - . .

· 9. ;Jam ~s Crutchfield et al, "Chaos," Scientific American 255, no. 6: 4B-5§_; 53. - )

I 10. Peitgen and Richter, ibid., pp. 61-62.

11. Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,"1 in Paul Rabi now, editor, Foucault: A Reader (New York : Pantheon Books, 19B4) , pp . 76-1 oo, p. BB .

12. See for example Tricia Colli{ls and .Richard Mila~zo, Hyperframes: A Post-Appropriation Discourse, vo;: 1 '( Pari~~ Editions Antoine Canda~ . 1989) ,'-pp'. '13-14. , - ., )- l j . ~.

13. Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo, Hybrid Neutral: Modes of Abstraction and the Social, exhibition catalogue (New York: lndep~ndent Curators , -Inc., 198B), p. B. - _ I... ' -

14. Ibid., p. 13. _, ..;

15. Hal Foster, "Signs Taken for Wonders," ArtinAmerica74, no. 6 (JuneJ 9B6): 80-139; 139. _ ·- _,I -

16. Yves-.}\lain ~ois, "Painting: the Task of Mourning," in Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture, exhibition catalogue -(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1986), pp. 29_- 49, p. 29; emphasis mine. · ' r -. I ' ' - '· , '?: 17. ·Bois, ibid., p. 47. '~ - ) ./

18. C9llins and Milazzo, Hyperframes, ~P: 11 , 21 . I" ',\ _ / 1 ~

·19. Kathy Halbreich, "Real Abstract Theatre : The Wooster Group, " Parke// 17 (198B): 98-10flj 1qo; emphasis mjne.

20. On this, see for e~ample Fredric Jameson's often-cited "Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," New Left Review, no. 146 (July-August 1984) : 53-92. \...._ ~ ~ · · ...-

- 21. David Ruelle, "Strang~ Attractors, " i~ P~edrag Cvitan1ovic~_ed\tor, Universalfty in Ch---::s (Bri~t~I : '.'\d-am HJlger, ub": 1984), pp . 37-4S, pp. 47-4~ . _ 22. Robert Shaw, "Str~nge Attractors, Chaotic Behavior, and Information Flow," Zeitschrift fur Natutfo~sch 36a (1981 ): ' 80-112; 106.

' 23. Eric Alliez and Michel Feher, "The Luster of Capital,"2one 1/2 (n.d.) : :3·14-22; 3.15. - ' ...:

24. James Gleick, Chaos: M?king A New Science ,(New York : Viking Penguin , 1987), p .. 39. -----·-25. Herbert Franke, "Refractions of Science into Art," Frontiers of Chaos, ibid., pp.45-52, p, 47.

26. oA this, a~;in see·James'i"The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," ibid. ,where aesthetib production is seen·to imU ate the dominant mode of ~roduc-' ' ~ . _,. . ' lion at a given historical moment, and technology serves as a shorth&nd for the information networks of multinational capitalism. Jameson goes on to argue that it is lln these terms that the "postmodern sublime c~n- aldne be adequately theorized" (p. 80)."'See also Foster, ibid., esp. note #14. ·

27~ -~liez and ~eher, ibid., p. 317; ;mphasis mine. _ ) ·~ _,....

28. General ld~a . Editorial, File Megazine 27 (Toronto: -Spring, 1987): 6-8: ' -. - I... ,.

29. Benjamin, ibid., p. 240. 1 ·

30. "~merica Needsl~forma;ion , " promotional mailing for AT&T Information O~ ~all•M (19B9) , p. 2.

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vJ. The f1Jeanin,g of Ancients ,and the Moden~s. words P'- . \_ d . Plagiarism is n~c_essary. Progress implies it. It embraces. _..-

. u.se of his expressiOns, erases a false idea, and-replaces it with the beneath the is insti~ modernist bric-a:.brac tutionalized, its pow er as a med1

_, ;ecom~~ attenuated, because it is cut off from audi~nces outsid~ the university . . . Com pl .,..... f in graduater~riting programs lfave_produced poets who write what is known as 'the worksl ~ .ally elegant, usually lyric, an"1 most often solipsistic, it is churned out ,at such a rate that Donald 1 nd ~tray allegorical fragments "McPoem" and blames it for the general lack ~f inte_rest in-

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science itself has created a apply. Just as fractal geometry (and I really do hate using the science to genuinely improve research. Even a small child its application in some discovered that the human notion dear to scientists. So brains that learn to function In any case, you can feed all

situation in which such reveals the element of disorder word) for the past 50 years has

ethereal notions don't much in mathematical picturing, art reflected the failure of

our lives. We are slaves of state-exploited scientific presented with a new scientific marvel will readily imagine incredible weapons system.. . . Recent memory research has brain is not, in fact, very much like a computer at all, a computers cannot really like computers will eventually sorts of things into a system

function "like a brain," and find themselves shorting out. and get all sorts of things

back; it doesn't bother me as a critic if you want to call it art. But as a person, I've always found that art is perversely erotic, and I know by my terminal that this is one thing a computer, by nature, isn't.

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6. Henri Poincare quoted in John Briggs and F. C (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), P- 29. -

- _ 7. John Cage, "Indeterminacy," the second of thn University Press, 1961), pp. 35-40, p. 38.

8. David Campbell et al. , "Experimental Mathern< 1985): 374-384; 377_ -

9. James Crutchfield et al, "Chaos / Scientific Arr. I

10. Peitgen and Richter, ibid., PP• 61-62.

11. Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, Hist1 ,-12. See for example Tricia Collips and Richard ~ pp'. '13-14.

13. Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo, Hybrid NE Inc., 1988), P- 8.

14. Ibid., p. l 3. 15. Hal Foster, "Signs Taken for Wonders," Art in

16. Yves-Alain Bois, "Painting:- the Task of Moun (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1986), pp . 29-49, p.

17. ·Bois, ibid., p. 47.

18. Collins and Milazzo, Hyperframes, pp. 11, 21 I

19. Kathy Halbreich, "A.ea! Abstract Theatre : Thi

20. On this, see for example Fredric Jameson's c August 1984): 53-92. - ~ _

_ 21. David Ruelle, "Strange Attractors," in Predra1

_ 22. Robert Shaw, "Str~nge Attractors, Chaotic Be

' 23. Erle Alliez and Michel Feher, "The Luster of C I

24. James Gleick, Chaos: Mif!.king A New Scienc

25. Herbert Franke, "Refractions of Science into , i · ·"' . J I

26. On this, !!gain see~James'lr "The Cu!tural ,Log lion at a given pistorical moment, and technology ar~that- it is l!n these terms that th_e "postmode1

27. Alliez and Feher, ibid., p. 317; emphasis min, I

28. General Idea, Editorial, File Magazine 27 (To

29. Benjamin, ibid. , P- 240. ,

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computer screen is this of Jupiter with one of its and get an idea of what the what a moon and a planet blowup your potato chip and the other trick), thereby blowup and get a blowup of a what happens when you do computer can figure out the these successive images are sprouts. You get strands. chaos. gorgeous, something between and islands and spirals and jewels, sunspots, snowflakes. about them .... about harmony, and dissonance? Well, yes, and science itself has created a apply. Just as fractal geometry (and I really do hate using the science to genuinely improve research. Even a small child its application in some discovered that the human notion dear to scientists. So brains that learn to function In any case, you can feed all

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Let's say the three-GARY INDIANA dimensional model on the beautifully colored semipotato. Or, a metonymic space photo moons. With fractal geometry you can punch up the image potato is really like, or an would look like. zoom in on its surface with a producing a blowup. And, piece of the blowup. If you this with regular photographic structure of things that would sharply defined. But. Along You get " devil polymers. " The fractal photographs at microphotography and spin curlicues. They look like It's nice to just look at them ... after all, isn't art about the particularly about harmony's especially, no. I am sorry to situation in which such reveals the element of disorder word) for the past 50 years has

enhancement that looks like With the computer, you can little square cursor (this is you can zoom in on the ever saw Blow-Up, you recall equipment. But, because the normally lose definition, with symmetries, you get Deformed sets. You get Goethe Institute are paintings. Lots of whorls beautiful natural things: without thinking anyth-ing beautiful order in things, symbiotic partner, bring this up, but applied ethereal notions don't much in mathematical picturing, art reflected the failure of

our lives. We are slaves of state-exploited scientific presented with a new scientific marvel will readily imagine incredible weapons system .... brain is not, in fact, very much computers cannot really like computers will eventually sorts of things into a system

Recent memory research has like a computer at all, a function "like a brain," and find themselves shorting out. and get all sorts of things

back; it doesn't bother me as a critic if you want to call it art. But as a person, I've always terminal that this is one thing found that art is perversely

a computer, by nature, isn't. erotic, and I know by my

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generally · to a state that luminous flow, acoustic ~ waves, ... , 1 not

the gasses inhaled / _ emitted,, variously perfu'med, 'urine, saliva, - , blood, - even ~ plasm·a, and 1 so

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S'lw ''Jfleoha#u,"cJ,, o{f!fkufo, e.~ft/J Luce $~ It is already getting around-at what rate? in what contexts?

in spite of what resistances?-that women diffuse themselves according to modalities scarcely compatible with the framework of the ruling symbolics.

Which doesn't happen without causing some turbulence, we might even say some whirlwinds, that ought to be reconfined within solid walls of

principle, to keep them from spreading to Infinity .... So we shall have to turn back to "science" In order to ask

it some questions. Ask, for example, about its historical lag In elaborating a "theory" of fluids, and about the ensuing aporla even

In mathematical formalization ....

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r c' Certainly { these -"theoretical" , f.luids I have - enabled the - .... techr;iical-a_lso mathema1tical-for~ ~ of analysis to progress, white 0· losing a 1 cert-a,in relationship .\ to the _:___/ reality of bodies - in _

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r \• i th -\~ (- . -' ,_,, , _ \. e _ process .. ,. tn -1 ••• how, s~ , long a~ , t_his71 prerogative lasts, ( can -any :::r

articulation __ of sexu'al • ~ diff~ 'r'en'ce be possil>le'? \' Since what· -· is in excess with_,. respect to , form-for ~example, i__;- the - ~

feminine' sex-is ) necessarily ~ejected -;-as bene?th . of/ beyon_!! 0 - , l 1 • the ) system - currently m ' 1 force.... """' '

yet · 1

that woman-thing speaks. Blut / not "like," , not -same," - n~t "identica! ' with ) tsei'e _.\ nor to _ any - - x,

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etc. Not a "subject," r unless J transformed' by p~~oU-ocentris~. _ '_ it ,., spearks ( "fl ~ !d," even in 'the j paralyti'c

undersides ' 1\ of ~hat eco ~ oJ!ly. - I Symptoms- I] of , an "it , c~n't flow (~ any__'::--- more,. it lc'!n '. t - touch -,- _itself ..-.. " - Of whicl!_ - - ~one

may - undel stand · that she , ' imputes it to the father, and ' v to his · m9rphology.

one must' , .--know how to ·\listen othe{wise than - ' in form(s) to, he,ar , what) t / t says. That , it is

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continuous, !'--- compressible, dilatable, viscous, conductible, .-- ·.,_ diffusable,... - That - , it is -~'-- unending, potent and

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to- its / resistance - to I_:___- the countablfj!; that it enjoys suffers from a greater ' sensitivity .1 to pressures; that changes-in volu~e 1 or in force, - for example-according the degree of heat; that1 it ' is, in I, its I physical

reality, ' deter mined b -y r friction between 'two infinitely neighbo~ ing enti:ties-dynamics \ of - t ,he ' ~_near a'nd not _of· ' the

proper, movements coming from _'the - quasi ! contact betwe'en two - unities hardly 1 de~inable I __ as , siuch _ (in .-- _ a coef1ficient ' of viscosity measured' in poises, 1 fr'om Poiseuille, sic), ' and not energy Of1 • a 'finite System; tha.t it allOWS itself to 1- \ be

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__ .J cu r rents , coming _ . from other fluids or , exerting pressure throh gh the - wal,1s of.-·--- a solid; that -=- ' it mixes with

of · a like state, ,- , 'sometimes dilutes itself in then! in an almost \ 1 _homogeneous ;1 -manner, whic h--- mak;s the

distinction be_tWeen th~ One- I' and I , th~ - Other problematical; and furthermor~· that it I i_s · alrea ~:y diffuse "In itself,"

which_ disconcer.ts any attempt . at static 1 identification ... ,· And the object 1 a? _ How can it be defined with

re~pect \ " . to th~ p roperties, - < also, \ of - fluids? \ Since this , "object" _ refers /~ back most ._ generally · to a state - that is

,.theirs? ~ Milk, luminous flow,• acou~tic ----. waves, ... , not to mention the gasses inhaled / _ emitted,,. variously perfu'med, of

'u r ine, saliv~ , - , blood, -' even _ plasma, and · so on ( ) I

are not the· "object .-- a"s enumerated in the

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feces - variously . J dlsgui1sed- have ' the -t _ privilege\ of ' serving as :::S the paradigm . for '_ the object ·a? , Must we . then en

underst~nd this !, modell_ng .. fu~ction-more · or less _ hidde'n ' from < VieW~Of : · th'e Object I

1 Of I• desire as reJulting from the en

passage,L - a SUCCeSSfUI t One', from ) the fl'uid tO the SOiid ' ... ti, ! . state? · The ·. - object of ' · desire itself;-.. would be the tn

'1 ·, transformation ·of l 1fluid · to ·solid? Which ' sea~s-this is . ""'""

well worth , repeciling- the triumph , of ration-:,ity. So-lid .g mechanics_'' a'nd rational.ity i 1. ~have inainta_in

1ed a - ~elatio~ship of "C r

Very long Standing, One ) against Which· fluids _ have I never en '- . 1\ r · stopped ., arguing.... Q.

1 Since historically 1, the prope~ties of

1 fluids . have been

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feminine, how _ is ' the instinc#ual dualism ~ articulated with the . difference - between the sexes? How ao, - has . it ,\ been (' possible even to ' "imagi·n-e'" that this c I , I /"/ e,conomy

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electronlc -or mechanlcal means (lncludln~ pli~tocopylng, recording, or Information storage and ret,-leval) w!tho~ per~l~·lon 'ln Writing ·fro~ ·tfie_ - . ' : . - •. ·.

Strange·AUractors: Signs of C:haos - /. -·· '

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