Second law of thermodynamics.

Last night while talking to Aaron and looking through my newly purchased kaleidoscope, I realized that what I am trying to do, in essence my thesis topic, is to relate the second law of thermodynamics to design. That everything is constantly moving and evolving, and because of the arrow of time (see Hawking), we feel that time has passed and is aging the world around us. Capitalizing on the effect of time on design could be extremely powerful and an interesting study to say the least.

Idea for visual-deterioration experience thesis project

I began writing this June (last week) and so far have covered it's application to art history up to Visual Poetry of the 60's. In my research and writing I have come across some projects of the past that I find very intriguing and fascinating. I am considering using them as inspiration in some sort of the thesis project next semester that I would like to include:

1. 3-dimensional walk-through type of experience for the viewer
2. layers of deterioration / show how something has aged over time
3. transparent so it is different from various viewpoints
4. possibly an environmental installation

Here is the writing I found to be very interesting and inspiring. These are quotes from William Seitz's book "The Art of Assemblage."

“The world of artifacts can be seen (as Monet sought to see nature) with a vision freed from conceptual preconditioning. The peeling décollage on abandoned billboards in the blighted neighborhoods of Chicago or Jersey City, accented by the singing colors and clean edges of emblems intended to sell cigarettes and beer, or the rubble of fallen New York tenements piled between walls patterned in flowered pink and blues, can take on an intense beauty more poignant than that of the lacerated posters and graffiti that cover the old walls of Rome and Paris.”
-William Seitz on the collage environment, from “The Art of Assemblage.”

“This ‘rurban’ environment is truly a collage landscape: an unplanned assemblage of animated gasoline displays, screaming billboards, hundred-mile-an-hour automobiles jammed bumper to bumper, graveyards of twisted and rusting scrap, lots strewn with bed springs and cracked toilet bowls.”
- William Seitz on the collage environment, from “The Art of Assemblage.”

Then I found pictures of installations done by Robert Rauschenberg that were absolutely amazing. I would really like to create a dying walk-through experience or somehow apply this idea to modern design. Maybe with peal-away advertising that only gets better as it ages, or is prepared and meant for deterioration.





Completely amazing work.