After reading a bit of this and that about information theory I began to describe some of my most recent projects in the light of these ideas. But I don't think that most folks know what "information theory" really means, other than just the juxtaposition of two cool-sounding and contemporary words...

Information theory was originally started by Claude E. Shannon, a pretty heavy dude who worked at Bell Labs, designing telegraphs and whatnot. He wrote a paper about how to calculate how information can be communicated over a noisy line. I think this paper was the first to discuss the "bit" as the fundamental unit of information. It also has to do with how much information can be compressed and encoded, how much work it takes to receive information, etc. The paper also discusses entropy, which is normally thought of as the concept of the universe slowly falling apart and getting colder and more depressing, and also my most common rationalization for why I shouldn't even try to clean up my room. Er, I mean my palace. But Shannon's theory of entropy actually refers to how much information is conveyed by a certain signal, and how uncertain the signal is. The trick is that both these kinds of entropy are actually the same thing. Or something. It's all very deep I can assure you. Here is the link to get you started:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_entropy

This all sounds quite dry, but since the completion of my RELAY project I have been thinking a lot about how evolution is a process in which errors in the communication of information are essential - for this is what mutation is. The process of evolution is what created all the most beautiful things. It would be desperately unfair to compare the work of any sculptor to, say, a tree. But I think that artistic processes that use the algorythms of evolution have the potential to create a new aesthetic. RELAY was a good starting point for me, but honestly I have not yet figured it out.

But dropping my made-up angsty art bs for a bit, even the simple process of looking at art can be analysed as receiving information. If we say a picture is either "boring" or, conversely, "too busy" we are speaking in terms of information theory without knowing it (though now you know, AKIHTB). That people find symmetry pleasing involves information theory. That information can be translated from one code to another involves information theory. This is what was happening in "China Readings" - information encoded as images was re-encoded to information encoded as spoken language - Mandarin Chinese.

Now, I have never touched a telegraph in my life, so I have very little to say about the scientific side, but I have some very odd theories about how communication works and want to use my artistic practice to realize these theories, develop them further, and create peices that communicate visually. But I'm not the kind of guy who can write a coherent essay explaining his position. Luckily other more well-spoken people can! Check this out:

http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_3.html?page=9&part=2

One of the most interesting ideas is Jim Bumgardner's reference to the ideas of different tolerances for information redundancy as a reason why people enjoy different types of music and art. This might be a link that leads to a more levelheaded analysis of a very outmoded but perhaps underrated theory of aesthetics - the idea of personal "taste."

In this article humans are referred to as "noisy receivers." I actually think a little differently. In WWII the weakest link in the German's formidable Enigma encryption system was not the transmissions themselves, but the transmission of the codebooks - the keys to the mechanical encryption machines. Humans all have codebook systems too; the memories of sensory experiences we use to unlock the "codes" of language. For example, you use the memory of hearing the sound "apple" in connection with an *apple* to understand what someone is talking about when they say "There are no apples in Apple Jacks." We have to build up this codebook so we can understand such abstact sentances as "I love music" where each word's definition is built up from millions of sensory experiences and instinctual urges. Not that we start with a complete "tabla rasa", but this is the core of subjective experience. Even if we had an ideal noise-free communication, the information received would be "damaged" (perhaps "different" would be a less judgemental word) because we have different codebooks. This is especially obvious when someone offers their "interpretation" of a work. They are explaining the work to other people, but they are also revealing their own cyphers - their associations, their memories, their feelings. This is why it is essential that they explain the exact same image. This is how the Enigma code was cracked - by analysing the data in reverse. That's why it is so fascinating to hear people's explanations; with one "constant" we can use our vastly-powerful experience simulation machines (our brains) to reverse-engineer the "variables" of their subjective experience. Indeed, much of people's conversation is a process of comparing, homogenizing, or accounting for differences in the codebook of subjective experience in order to maximize communication potential.