Definitions of Entropy

So, there is apparently many definitions of entropy, and they all seem to have rather different meanings. I think that one of the definitions (or meanings of the word), namely: 3. A measure of the loss of information in a transmitted message, is what Yve-Alain Bois is talking about in the first part of Water Closet, especially when he refers to Bataille's "own entropic interpretation of the phenomenon of mimicry as 'depersonalization by assimilation to space.'" As always, I feel there is a great "loss of information in a transmitted message" when I read this book, but now at least I know what to call it :)

In more general terms, then, I think this first part is about the 'entropy' in communication as Bataille sees it, to various degrees. For example, he–– Bataille––criticizes Genet for "maintaining a 'glass partition' between himself and us", apparently a view he shares with Sartre (To make a comment on that from my own perspective, I would say it is impossible to communicate to anyone without having some sort of 'filter' between you and the recipient, no matter how much you are trying to send out a 100% clear message). So, all in all, it is about communication in one way or the other. One of the more extreme forms of 'communication' is then described in what Genet calls a "epiphany" where he "knew I was identical to this man ..." Oh well, I'm not 100% sure that the other man felt exactly the same as he did ...

When, as always in this book, Bois is talking about how different artists can be said to take use of these different 'theories', it always becomes much clearer and more interesting(?) too. I found Jean Arp's notes on 'papiers déchirés' to be very interesting, and especially how he describes the meaninglessness of perfectness, and how everything is an approximation, at the best. It seems to me that his picture 'papiers déchirés' is an attempt at describing entropy in an almost finalized stage, as in another definition of entropy [4. The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.] except that it is not the universe he is describing, but something that at one point was 'form' now is something else, or as he says it "form had turned into formlessness". To me, this seems to be in harmony, so I don't quite understand the comments in the book that he moves away from this, and to a "return to an essential order, to a harmony ..."

Jumping forward a bit: I really like Allan McCollum's piece "Natural Copies from the Coal Mines of Central Utah". For the most part I like it because I think it can 'communicate' to a lot of different people on a lot of different levels. It has an immidiate 'superficial' appealing appearance to it, but also a much deeper, layered quality that will only become clearer if you take interest in it and explore it more thoroughly.

... more to come, if needed ...