10.54103/2036-461X/17087
The article revisits the concept of entropy in art as discussed by Gestalt psychologist and art theorist Rudolf Arnheim. His discussion of artworks and their reception as complex dynamic fields where the forces of entropy and orderliness counter and complete each other, are brought into dialogue with newer approaches, from the perspective of complexity theory and neuroscience, to the dynamics of perception and to entropic processes in the brain. I will argue that even though Arnheim’s observations can still be valuable for contemporary art criticism they need to be updated as they tend to overstate the tendency for order as well as the visual aspects of reception in the expense of multimodal and embodied aspects. In light of these observations, I will discuss contemporary cases of ‘entropic’ art through the moving image works of Marco Brambilla, their aesthetics as well as the ‘structural themes’ arising and the Gestalt processes involved in their reception.
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Maria Poulaki
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Media art
A  Gestalt Theory for ‘Disorder’: From Arnheim’s Ordered Chaos to Brambilla’s Entropic Art
Text.Serial.Journal
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Thematic issue / Section thématique
2022-06-27
2022-01-14
2022-12-30
2022-12-30
55-67
Cinéma & Cie
Maria Poulaki
2022/06/27
10.54103/2036-461X/17087
55
Hellenic Open University
2036-461X
38
Media art
en
67
A  Gestalt Theory for ‘Disorder’: From Arnheim’s Ordered Chaos to Brambilla’s Entropic Art
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/17087/15811
22
                                                                                       A Gestalt Theory for ‘Disorder’:
                                                                                       From Arnheim’s Ordered Chaos
                                                                                       to Brambilla’s Entropic Art
                                                                                       Maria Poulaki, Hellenic Open University




                                                                                       The article revisits the concept of entropy in art as discussed by Gestalt psychologist           Keywords
                                                                                       and art theorist Rudolf Arnheim. His discussion of artworks and their reception as            Rudolf Arnheim
                                                                                       complex dynamic fields where the forces of entropy and orderliness counter and
                                                                                       complete each other, are brought into dialogue with newer approaches, from the
                                                                                                                                                                                             Entropy
                                                                                       perspective of complexity theory and neuroscience, to the dynamics of perception and         Marco Brambilla
                                                                                       to entropic processes in the brain. I will argue that even though Arnheim’s observations               Gestalt
                                                                                       can still be valuable for contemporary art criticism they need to be updated as they       Dynamical systems
                                                                                       tend to overstate the tendency for order as well as the visual aspects of reception in              Media art
                                                                                       the expense of multimodal and embodied aspects. In light of these observations, I will
                                                                                                                                                                                                 DOI
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License




                                                                                       discuss contemporary cases of ‘entropic’ art through the moving image works of Marco
                                                                                       Brambilla, their aesthetics as well as the ‘structural themes’ arising and the Gestalt            10.54103/
                                                                                       processes involved in their reception.                                                     2036-461X/17087




                                                                                         Entropy as a measure of uncertainty in information theory and as an indication
                                                                                       of the tendency for disorder through energy loss according to the second law
                                                                                       of thermodynamics could be considered synonymous with dissolution and
                                                                                       disintegration of form. In this sense it is antithetical to Gestalt theory’s interest
                                                                                       in form and the process of its emergence. This contradiction is the reason we
                                                                                       are drawn to prominent art theorist and Gestalt psychologist Rudolf Arnheim’s
                                                                                       interest in entropy and its connection to Gestalt principles, as well as its
                                                                                       application to art. His contribution is further important as it strengthens the
                                                                                       thread that links Gestalt psychology, through the dynamics of perception, with
                                                                                       more recent approaches like dynamical systems neuroscience, which is also
                                                                                       interested in the concept of entropy and how it plays out in cognitive processes.
                                                                                         Following physicist Max Planck,1 Arnheim associates entropy with ‘elementary
                                                                                       disorder’ that irreversibly increases and ultimately drives a system and its
                                                                                       surroundings towards total degradation. On the notion of disorder he also quotes
                                                                                       Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Köhler: ‘The word disorder applies suitably to
                                                                                       physical states in which a multiplicity of elements pursue mostly independent
                                                                                       paths but, for short times, come into physical connection’.2 So Arnheim applied
                                                                                       this notion of entropy-as-disorder to art: ‘A visual parallel can be found in works


                                                                                       Cinéma & Cie vol. 22 no. 38 2022 · ISSN 2036-461X                                                       55
     of art that appear to consist of unrelatable units. The components strain to adapt
     to one another, fight each other, come apart. The disorderly pattern is perceived
     as a combination of independent units locked in unreadable conflict’.3 But what
     would be an entropic artwork for Arnheim? As opposed to the tendency for
     artistic simplicity, he writes,

              The other tendency, relying on accidental or deliberately produced
              disorder, can be traced back to a predilection for compositions of
              randomly gathered subject matter in Dutch still lifes, untidy scenes
              of social criticism in the generation of Hogarth, groups of unrelated
              individuals in French genre scenes of the nineteenth century, and
              so on. In modern painting we note the more or less controlled
              splashes and sprays of paint, in sculpture a reliance on chance
              textures, tears or twists of various materials, and found objects.4

        His examples here come mainly from painting, although we could also find
     such in film — notably in Soviet Montage in which conflict played a key role, and
     multiplicity manifested in space (due to compositional elements maintaining
     their heterogeneity and certain ‘independence’) as well in time (due to frequent
     cutting resulting in a high number of shots). Steve Odin refers to Eisenstein’s
     ‘monism of ensemble’5 at the core of his conception of montage, where shots
     are juxtaposed to create a total impression, not just accompanying each other
     but functioning as ‘elements of equal significance’.6 Even though Arnheim
     writes on entropy as disorder, his main interest is in the way the increase
     of entropy can build a higher level of order. He refers to order as a process
     rather than as a set property of a form, being mostly interested in order as
     emergent from randomness and disorder. No matter how complex a structure,
     it can show a certain degree of ‘orderliness’. Homogeneity is the simplest way
     of ordering material (‘the most elementary structural scheme’)7 — and from
     there various degrees of ordering can emerge. Artistic creation thus becomes a
     self-regulatory process of ordering — and the same applies to the reception of
     art. Only from a macro-perspective can order be discerned, as Arnheim argues:
     ‘only when we look at macrostates rather than at the single elements that
     comprise them’.8 In this sense, entropy can also be created through repetition,
     which might be redundant for information theory but useful for art, as it might
     contribute to the emergence of a structural theme. For example, Arnheim
     refers to ‘the processions of almost identical human figures on the walls of San
     Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna’;9 their grouping makes a new form emerge, that
     of a multitude of worshipers different than the sum of its parts, which affects
     the beholder perceptually as well as emotionally. While Gestalt psychology’s
     concept of ‘Prägnanz’, interpreted (wrongly for Arnheim) as ‘good form’, has
     been well known and rather influential, Arnheim is critical of confusing the
     notion of order with Prägnanz. As he argues,

              Order can be analyzed with the tools of Gestalt psychology, which,
              in principle, has ways of determining levels of complexity as well
              as degrees of orderliness. This does not mean that a high level


56                                              Poulaki, A Gestalt Theory for ‘Disorder’
         of order is the same as a ‘good Gestalt’ — an unfortunate term,
         which, in some of the early Gestalt writings, burdened a purely
         descriptive concept with a value judgment and made a definite
         structural condition look subjective and vague. The term was used
         to describe the tendency toward regularity, symmetry, simplicity,
         best named ‘the law of simplicity’ or perhaps ‘the law of dynamic
         direction,’ as Köhler called it in 1938. Because of the vagueness of
         the term, ‘good Gestalt’. the law of simplicity was readily confused
         with ‘praegnanz’, meaning clear-cut structure, or with whatever
         else may be perceptually and aesthetically enjoyable, interesting,
         appropriate, or useful. [...] [T]he law of simplicity refers only to
         orderliness attained by tension reduction.10

  As it becomes apparent from this passage, Arnheim’s view of order is dynamic,
aligned with a tendency for tension reduction, rather than a finite state — and
much less, indeed, a value judgement associated with ‘good’ Gestalt. Artworks
are not interesting only when they offer harmonic compositions and well-
recognizable shapes, but when they invite perception to respond with ‘acts of
recognition’,11 through a dynamic movement that makes forms emerge. Here
Arnheim of course stays faithful to the basic tenets of Gestalt theory, and to
Köhler’s ‘law of dynamic direction’ expressed in field processes where wholes
and parts interact, and where the tendency for tension reduction coexists with
‘a tension-increasing articulation’.12 Despite this, however, Arnheim insists on
the necessity of order, not only in art (where he finds it ‘a necessary although
not a sufficient condition of aesthetic excellence’),13 but also in life, as ‘order
is a prerequisite for survival; therefore the impulse to produce orderly
arrangements is inbred by evolution. […] A pervasive striving for order seems
to be inherent […] in the human mind — an inclination that applies mostly for
good practical reasons’.14 Artistic striving for order is embedded in this wider
tendency. Entropy is still fascinating for Arnheim as it brings forward these
dynamics of orderliness that counter entropy’s drive towards disorganization,
homogenization and shapelessness.



ENTROPIC ART
  Arnheim finds art that engages with chance and contingency and contains
units coexisting in tension to be in dialogue with entropy, countering its
formless tendencies. He insisted that in order to be meaningful, contingency
should be subsumed to a certain structural theme ‘anabolically’ established
(referring to anabolism as a molecular process of building complexity through
energy storage), ‘which introduces and maintains tension’.15 He was thus rather
critical of artistic attempts to create the impression of randomness and entropy
without subsuming it to a structural theme. He particularly refers to ‘certain
avant garde attempts in film editing [insisting on this point since the 1930s
when in his writings on film, he criticized Carl Theodor Dreyer’s La Passion de
Jeanne d’Arc (1928) for the same reason],16 or the multiplication or mixing of


Cinéma & Cie vol. 22 no. 38 2022 · ISSN 2036-461X                                     57
     media to combine disparate elements more or less at random. […] [B]ut mere
     randomness of combination does not suffice to create readable complexity’.17
     Such works are not entropic for Arnheim, as they do not involve the anabolic
     process of spending energy and building tension through the process of
     organization:

              A mind released from the demands of organized experience may
              content itself with the shapelessness of accidental materials,
              happenings, or sounds. Mere noise involves a minimum of structural
              tension and therefore calls for a minimum of energy expended by
              producer and recipient, in spite of creating the illusion that much
              is going on. In the extreme case, again, it will reach the emptiness
              of homogeneity.18

        He concludes that artistic techniques used to create noise in art, when not
     handled with competence, lead to chaos, ‘which is very close to saying nothing’.19
     A good sense of form on behalf of the artist can bring forth interesting and
     even beautiful structural themes, but ‘mere randomness of combination does
     not suffice to create readable complexity’.20 Neither, however, a complex order,
     even if it corresponds to a level of complexity that the human mind can handle is
     for Arnheim a sufficient condition to make an artwork valuable. What is mostly
     important, he remarks, ‘is that this order reflect a genuine, true, profound view
     of life’.21 We should not interpret Arnheim’s remark as a call to naturalism or
     representational realism (Arnheim was after all a devoted formalist), but rather
     as a call to art that, as he writes, ‘makes visible or audible’ a particular form
     of order of the human condition. Art that becomes a message exactly because
     of this coupling with the human observer or listener — and not because of
     its complexity per se, but because of its profound meaning communicating
     something anew, or offering a new perspective on life: ‘A structural theme
     deserves to be ordered, to become a message, because of what it says about
     man and world’.22



     GESTALT THEORY AS COMPLEXITY THEORY?
       Arnheim’s fascination with entropy and his discussion of it in the context of
     artistic complexity is insightful and important in that it brings the Gestalt theory
     of art in dialogue with complex systems theory. A number of points he makes
     is compatible with approaches that were developed in later decades — even
     though it could be said that complexity theory was not unknown to the art
     and humanities in the 1970s, for example in the work by Gene Youngblood on
     expanded cinema or Buckminster Fuller’s ‘synergetics’.23 Particularly, Arnheim
     places emphasis on the independence of elements out of which wholes emerge
     rather than on wholes alone. In this sense, to an extent his analysis in Entropy
     and Art could be considered to share the perspective of what Ian Bogost calls
     ‘new complex systems theory’.24 The latter differs from earlier ‘classical’
     systems theory in that it privileges bottom-up approaches, placing emphasis on



58                                               Poulaki, A Gestalt Theory for ‘Disorder’
the way units interact and form aggregates that are different than the sum of
their parts, further becoming themselves subsystems of larger organizations in
a process of growing complexity. In a later essay from 1990, Arnheim confirms
his earlier stance defending with a greater awareness Gestalt theory as a
complex systems theory and insisting on a two-way determination of Gestalt
wholes, as ‘any description uniquely favoring the role of either the part or the
whole will fail to do justice to the richness of field processes’.25
   Arnheim’s emphasis on dynamics of orderliness that use energy to create
structure out of disorder is compatible with a paradigm change that according
to Katherine Hayles took place in systems theory after the 1970s, according to
which randomness is not ‘simply [...] the lack of pattern [...] but […] the creative
ground from which pattern can emerge’.26 Pattern and randomness are found
in a productive dialectic, as systems achieve higher levels of complexity with
the ‘infusion of noise’.27 Even though Arnheim might not have embraced chaos
as a force of emergence so enthusiastically, he nonetheless regards it as a
necessary condition for order and meaning to emerge, thus his perspective is
quite progressive in this respect, and reveals how Gestalt theory —on which
his thinking is based, more than it is based on physics and thermodynamics
— is linked to these later developments. Moreover, Arnheim’s view of making
meaning is compatible with ideas emerging around the time of Entropy and Art
on autopoietic coupling of system and environment — as proposed by Humberto
Maturana and Francisco Varela in 1972 in their theory of autopoiesis.28 In their
seminal work on cognitive neuroscience and philosophy, The Embodied Mind
(1992), which drew on autopoiesis, Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch
point out that the constitution of patterns is fundamental to the way a system
‘couples’ with its environment, and is associated with the way autopoietic
organisms self-organize by relating and dealing with external complexity:
‘over time this coupling [of a system with its milieu] selects or enacts from a
world of randomness a domain of distinctions [...] that has relevance for the
structure of the system. In other words, on the basis of its autonomy the system
selects or enacts a domain of significance’.29 The meaning Arnheim looks for
in an artwork does not have to do so much, as already pointed out, with its
technical competence and formal complexity per se, but with its ability, through
its structural theme or pattern, to create a domain of significance, and therefore
a world that is meaningful to the beholder, who, in this perspective, would be a
system as well, coupling with the work.




Cinéma & Cie vol. 22 no. 38 2022 · ISSN 2036-461X                                      59
     FROM ENTROPY TO ORDER AND
     BACK TO ENTROPY: THE COMPLEXITY
     OF SYSTEMS FROM GESTALT TO
     DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS THEORY
        Even though, as Wagemans et al. argue, the Berlin School of Gestalt psychology,
     the teaching of which Arnheim follows in Entropy and Art (particularly that of
     Köhler), ‘tended to emphasize properties of the system above properties of the
     system elements’ and to consider form superseding its elements in a ‘one way
     global to local determination’,30 they recognize that Gestalt theory’s ideas paved
     the way for later theories of dynamic cognitive organization, such as dynamical
     systems neuroscience. Arnheim’s reference to the neuronal basis of Gestalts
     in art’s reception is through Köhler’s electromagnetic field theory of brain
     functioning. Perceived forms, for example in a visual composition of an artwork
     — a dynamic field in itself according to Arnheim — corresponds to a neuronal
     cortical field that is isomorphically dynamic, ‘because only when the forces
     constituting a process are sufficiently free to interact can a pattern organize
     itself spontaneously according to the structure prevailing in the whole’.31 Even
     though it is debatable whether Köhler’s particular theory still has bearing in
     modern neuroscience (with some claiming it has been disproved while others
     that it is compatible with newer theories of consciousness),32 field theory takes
     a holistic and dynamic perspective on neuronal organization; but its tendency
     to consider these dynamics tending always to a certain equilibrium is less
     supported when taking a contemporary dynamical systems theory perspective
     that sees brain dynamics inherently entropic and considers instability the
     fundamental state of neuronal functioning. Ordered areas, represented by
     attractors in the brain’s state-space, are never stable, as the mind’s dynamics
     is ‘metastable’, meaning that its normal condition is to drift, as neuroscientists
     Emmanuelle Tognoli and Scott Kelso note, between and away from stable
     regions (represented by ‘attractors’ in the brain’s state-space). 33 The concept
     of the ‘entropic brain’ that has been recently proposed by Carhart-Harris et al.
     is based on states of ‘disorganization’ of the brain’s function. Such are states
     of ‘criticality’, ‘the property of being poised at a “critical” point in a transition
     zone between order and disorder’.34 Entropy increases when the mind-brain is
     under the influence of substances (such as hallucinogenics) but also in different
     conditions and states of uncertainty, which can be reached through different
     avenues, ranging from dreaming to art. When the brain system’s entropy
     increases, the multiplicity of potential states rises, and the system acquires
     a ‘maximum sensitivity to perturbation’,35 which means that it can easily and
     unpredictably switch to different directions. In this perspective, processes of
     formation of Gestalts in perception and consciousness are never complete
     or stable. Carhart-Harris et al. distinguish between the secondary ‘waking’



60                                                Poulaki, A Gestalt Theory for ‘Disorder’
consciousness and the ‘primary’ brain states of risen entropy. Secondary
consciousness shows an ‘entropy-suppressing function’ that ‘serves to promote
realism, foresight, careful reflection and an ability to recognize and overcome
wishful and paranoid fantasies. Equally however, it could be seen as exerting a
limiting or narrowing influence on consciousness’.36 It is interesting how both
Arnheim in his discussion of entropy in the early 1970s as well as the entropic
brain theorists (re)turn to Freud: Arnheim in stressing the need for ‘tension
reduction’, expressed in suppression of drives as well as in the drive towards
order and structure, and Carhart-Harris et al., from the opposite end, in arguing
that the entropic brain in its primary states corresponds to the Freudian
unconscious, with the rise in criticality releasing tension that the secondary,
normal waking consciousness suppresses. A similar attitude, open to the
destabilizing forces of entropy as a positive organizing force, can be discerned
in both cases, however more emphatically and decisively in the case of Carhart-
Harris et al. because of the change of paradigm that took place in cognitive
science during the past few decades.37



NEW ENTROPIC ART? THE CASE OF
MARCO BRAMBILLA’ S MEDIA ART
  Arnheim’s observations on art and entropy can be useful when considering
contemporary works representing the ‘tendency for disorder’ through
multiplicity and randomness in their composition. One could argue that complex
compositions, which resemble the ‘French genre scenes of the 19th century’
Arnheim mentions but have also evolved in their complex and mixed-media
environments such as those I will shortly discuss, resist macrostructure,
or rather offer dynamic and unstable macrostructures, because from the
beholder’s perspective, engaging with different parts of the work might make
new macrostructures and patterns emerge.
  This is not, of course, a characteristic of new media art only. Such dynamics
bring to mind works in the tradition of op art, for example Bridget Riley’s
Composition with Circles 2 (2001): the more you look at its multiple, almost
identical patterns, the more constellations and shapes you can discern, while
old ones fade and new ones emerge continuously. The dimension of time is
fundamental in the experience of such dynamic artworks, and becomes even
more so in the arts of the moving image. It would thus not be entirely accurate
to call these dynamic and transitive macrostructures ‘order’. Moreover, even
orderliness as a tendency for Gestalt ordering might not be the most essential
aspect of the beholder’s experience, as the mind-body is engaged and challenged
in different ways in works that surpass the pictorial.
  Contemporary media artworks such as those of Marco Brambilla make an
interesting case to explore such issues. Brambilla produces moving image work
that is quite versatile in terms of styles, techniques and media used, ranging


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     from large-scale 3D video collages and panoramas (e.g., the Megaplex series:
     Civilization, Evolution, Creation, 2008-2012) to music videos (for rapper Kanye
     West’s song ‘Power’ (2010)) or the stage video-projections for Debussy’s opera
     Pelléas et Mélisande (2018) produced by Opera Vlaanderen and directed by
     Aviel Cahn.
       Brambilla’s work Civilization, the first piece of the Megaplex trilogy, is a piece
     originally commissioned by the NYC Standard Hotel and designed to be installed
     on the side of its elevator shaft which would thus function as projection surface
     for the work to be watched from the lift’s interior. The shaft’s long vertical
     surface became a tableau populated with an excessive multiplicity: hundreds
     of videos projected and overlaid to compose baroque collages. Brambilla
     worked with Photoshop in his studio to make the collages as still canvases on
     which, aided by technicians and VFX artists (Crush studio), he overlaid sampled
     clips from Hollywood movies projected in loops on these canvases. Over four
     hundred video clips thus composed a huge ‘video mural’, which the elevator
     passengers could experience as a trip from hell to heaven, as the lift goes up,
     and from heaven to hell as it goes down.38
       Brambilla often adopts in his work the technique of collage, consisting of — in
     Arnheim’s expression — ‘unrelatable units’ which bring into dynamic interplay
     the unit with the whole. As he explains in an interview, ‘Collage is the point of
     departure, juxtaposing imagery then superimposing looping visuals onto one
     another and setting cuts from various films into each other to create original
     narratives. They function much like the parabolic style of Hieronymus Bosch
     who layered fables and proverbs as detailed notes within a big picture’.39
       As already noted, the piece Civilization gave birth to a trilogy of large-scale 3D
     video installations called Megaplex to evoke the homonymous cinema theaters
     in the US, hinting at Brambilla’s background as a filmmaker and his passion
     for cinema. The embodied engagement of the beholder in this series of works
     (in the case of Civilization, ascending — or even descending in the case of the
     elevator projection — on a journey to heaven) presumably changes the affect of
     the images as well as the emerging Gestalts and narratives each time a visitor
     takes a journey.
       Experiencing Civilization in an elevator differs from experiencing this and
     the other vivid ‘tableaus’ of the series in a museum or gallery space — which
     has been the case, as Megaplex was exhibited in various places internationally.
     Following the regular, steady and mechanical movement of the elevator differs
     from the less restricted bodily engagement of the gallery visitor, who, unlike
     the hotel visitor, can experience the work in 3D. The three parts of the trilogy
     involve camera movement in three different axes: Civilization as already noted
     moves on the vertical axis, Evolution on the horizontal axis (as it unfolds like a
     pre-cinematic panorama, scrolling sideways), while Creation is a ‘cosmic pull
     back’ on the z-axis. These types of movement are conceptually linked to the
     works (Civilization for example evokes religious themes while Evolution refers
     to historical and chronological development), building embodied metaphors
     that make such concepts felt on a precognitive level.



62                                               Poulaki, A Gestalt Theory for ‘Disorder’
  Areas of orderliness are certainly present within this multiplicity, as the
swarm of looping videos in each moving mural is placed in a certain way with an
intention to form patterns discerned from a vantage point. In all cases, however,
there is an effect of ‘excess’ — not only spatial (due to the multiplicity of scenes,
the large scale of the installation and the high number of these ‘detailed notes’
contained in the canvases) but also temporal, as what the viewer ‘catches’ each
time is dependent on the speed of the images’ (as well as the viewer’s own)
movement — which is never enough to properly attend to the work, and makes it
hard to remember it in detail. In Megaplex, as described on Brambilla’s website,
‘The hyper-saturated tableaus test the limits of visual overload, looping and
interlacing in a way that confounds the temporal parameters of the moving
image’. Brambilla’s work as a whole often evokes the sense of visual overload
which certainly exceeds the ‘visual’ itself, involving the whole sensorium. This
also applies to the music video Brambilla made for artist Kanye West’s song
‘Power’, where influences from Renaissance paintings are here too discernible
in the multiplicitous composition and arrangement of elements. The visual, or
rather ‘sensory’,40 overload consists of trying to include as much as possible
within the limits of a projection surface, experimenting with its form, as well as
extending it in time.
  Brambilla’s interest in excess, as well as in infinity, becomes manifest through
the use of multiplicity and superimpositions, looping elements and kaleidoscopic
elements, as well as formal and mathematical infinite multiplication, as in his
other work under the title Constellation (2015), described as ‘a computer-
generated video sculpture’ performing a multiplication based on the recursive
series of Fibonacci numbers, creating a fractal shape through a sphere
‘surrounded by a tryptic of projections’, and ‘replicated many times in space’.41
The multiplicity and heterogeneity that characterizes Brambilla’s moving-
image work challenges, as already broached, the formation of Prägnanz. In fact,
entropy seems more dominant here, as well as the dynamical processes of
formal change rather than equilibrium. Brambilla’s works can in this sense be
considered contemporary combinations of order and chaos.
  The relationship between this excessive multiplicity and entropy becomes
perhaps even clearer in Brambilla’s recent kinetic sculpture Winklevii: Bigger
Than Both of Us (2021). In this digital animated sculpture, the busts of Cameron
and Tyler Winklevoss, twin brothers considered among the early adopters and
ambassadors of the bitcoin cryptocurrency, are shown back-to-back, rotating,
inflating, deforming, multiplying and dissolving. The work, inspired by the
paintings of Francis Bacon, uses digital morphing to visually alter the form of the
avatars, while it is accompanied by sampled audio pieces of speech, soundbites
from interviews with the brothers containing their most used words and phrases
representing the terminology of cryptocurrency. These make a soundtrack
that, in Brambilla’s words, ‘becomes a mantra, and when you repeat and you
loop it and you cycle it, it becomes almost hypnotic’. Thus the aural modality
of the work matches the visual one’s tendency for excess and oversaturation.
As a result its energy ‘becomes more and more about entropy’, ‘a cyclone of


Cinéma & Cie vol. 22 no. 38 2022 · ISSN 2036-461X                                       63
     information’.42 As arts editor Virginia Valenzuela remarks in her article about
     the piece for SuperRare magazine, entropy in this sense represents ‘a decline
     into disorder, a theme which permeates throughout Brambilla’s Winklevii:43
     ‘the artwork reaches its manic climax of revolving figures and mantras before
     crashing back down to the start of its original aspirational anthem, only to build
     up again in a never ending cycle of rise and fall’.44
        Winklevii might be dealing, as the artist intends, with entropy and seemingly
     resisting the tendencies for ‘self-regulation’, submitting to chaotic and dispersive
     drives. It would still, however, be of interest to a Gestaltist like Arnheim because
     of its processes of trans-formation: the initial forms of the brothers might be
     changing and deforming but they acquire new, albeit monstrous form — before
     indeed ‘crashing’ and reemerging in a loop. They are therefore subjected to
     processes of orderliness in a way, even though this term would not be doing
     merit to the work’s continuously changing and looping nature. Any emerging
     forms as well as meaning is volatile and unstable, just like the mind that tends
     to be continuously drifting from established ‘Gestalts’; thus a work not locking
     to a unifying principle of a structural theme might be more profoundly engaging
     with the dynamics of the entropic brain.
        In any case it is important to keep in mind that orderliness does not emerge
     (only) in the work itself but in the mind of the perceiver, and is related to
     the emergence of meaning. One could say that some structural theme(s),
     even unstable and uncertain ones, can always emerge in the perception and
     interpretation of an artwork, even when the latter seems to actively resist a
     unifying principle, such as Brambilla’s Winklevii. The meaninglessness of
     Winklevii reflects that of the crypto-jargon, in an isomorphic kind of way, which
     is a Gestalt principle after all. The work adopts the mode of communication of
     its subject, only to inflate and dismember as a result.
        It is not only vision and hearing that contribute to such emergence of
     meaning (even if this meaning is meaninglessness). Arnheim’s discussion of
     formal structure and meaning through an interplay of entropy and order in art
     includes the audiovisual but leaves out other non-visual and non-audible ways
     and modalities through which artworks make meaning, even if they are not
     subjected to visual or sonic ‘orderliness’. For example, his criticism in his 1930s
     writings on film of Dreyer’s Jeanne d’Arc for its pointless formalism can be
     understood, in the context of his later writings on entropy, as equivalent to his
     criticism of other (‘avant-garde’) works that create disorder without subsuming
     it to the powers of orderliness. However, in his criticism Arnheim seems to ignore
     the work’s embodied impact upon the viewer. Effects of cinematography and
     montage are bodily affective (practiced and theorized as such since Eisenstein)
     without constructing a specific formal ‘structural theme’ — still, meaning can
     emerge through the body. Dismemberment, fragmentation of body and speech
     and subjection of the body to many different points of view from invisible lookers,
     as in the case of Dreyer’s film, might as well constitute a meaningful message
     communicated by the choices of cinematography and editing, which invite the
     viewer to share the protagonist’s experience in an embodied way.



64                                               Poulaki, A Gestalt Theory for ‘Disorder’
  When it is the proper image of the body that the work involves, if only to dissolve
or dismember it either through editing or digital morphing, certain processes
of mirroring are at play (following arguments like those posed by the theory
of ‘embodied simulation’),45 as well as what Semir Zeki and Tomohiro Ishizu
called a disruption of the ‘inherited concepts’ of face and body (discussed in the
reception of Bacon’s paintings) that creates a ‘visual shock’ and an abnormal
neuronal reaction.46 But techniques such as montage, collage-like juxtaposition,
or flicker, also extensively explored in the 1960s avant-garde, primarily invite
a bodily sharing of rhythms of image change, and secondarily of movements
of actual seen figures and bodies. Thus the corresponding feeling of body of
the beholder should not only be discussed from the aspect of ‘mirorring’ or
simulating but also from that of an isomorphism addressing the very processes
of image and sound movement and the energies and rhythms that bring the
compositional units of the film — in their heterogeneity — into relation and
conflict. Phenomenologically such isomorphism might be expressed as altered
rhythms of breathing, heartbeat, changes in bodily posture and movements,
interoception, etc. Something similar has been proposed by Ellen Esrock
through the concept of ‘transomatization’.47
  While Arnheim saw the possibilities of multiplicity, heterogeneity, contingency,
and redundancy in art (in various forms and examples from Renaissance to
modern art) to increase entropy and thus build complexity through processes
of ordering and self-organization, he did not escape some reservation towards
what he saw as a misuse of such qualities, in ‘avant-garde attempts to mix
elements at random’, as already broached. In Brambilla’s digital works Metaform
No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 (2021), random objects chosen from a digital database
compose dense animated collages. They shine, some slowly move or rotate,
in compositions evoking the 16th century ‘cabinets of curiosities’, displays of
significant or curious objects that collectors kept and demonstrated in their
houses, before museums were established. Each of the Metaform collages
suggests a multiplicity that does not assimilate or make any meaning as a
whole, apart from seen as a collection visualizing that of the stock library of 3D
assets it originates from — each object notably accompanied by its URL. It is the
unit (as in Bogost’s ‘unit operations’) that digital technology and culture builds
upon, making it not only demonstrable as in these digital Wunderkammers
Brambilla replicated, but also exchangeable.
  In its properly meta-gestaltist title, ‘Metaform’ invites us to reflect on what is
art, what is left when entropy renders art and cultural objects into a ‘heap’, i.e.
a collection of unrelatable units, and how this noise can again be turned into art
that is somehow meaningful.




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Notes
 1
   See Max Planck, ‘Entropy and Temperature of Radiant Heat’ [Entropie und Temperatur Strahlender
Warme], Annalen der Physik, 1.4 (1900), 719–737.
  2
     Rudolf Arnheim, Entropy and Art: An Essay on Order and Disorder (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1971), 13; quoting Wolfgang Köhler from Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären
Zustand: eine naturphilosophische Untersuchung (Braunschweig: Vieweg & Sohn, 1920).
  3
    Arnheim, Entropy and Art, 13.
  4
    Ibidem, 10.
  5
     Steve Odin, ‘Blossom Scents Take Up the Ringing: Synaesthesia in Japanese and Western Aesthetics’,
Soundings, 69.3 (1986), 256–281 (274).
  6
    Ibidem, 276.
  7
    Arnheim, Entropy and Art, 51.
  8
    Ibidem, 28.
  9
    Ibidem, 17.
  10
     Ibidem, 51–52.
  11
     Arnheim, Visual Thinking (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 90.
  12
     See Arnheim, ‘The Two Faces of Gestalt Psychology’, American Psychologist, 41.7 (1986), 820–824.
  13
     Arnheim, Entropy and Art, 51.
  14
     Ibidem, 3.
  15
     Ibidem, 52, emphasis in the original.
  16
     See Arnheim, Film as Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), 40–41.
  17
     Ibidem, 19.
  18
     Ibidem, 53.
  19
     Ibidem, 19.
  20
     Ibidem.
  21
     Ibidem, 56.
  22
     Ibidem, 55.
  23
     See Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema (New York: P. Dutton & Co, 1970).
  24
     See Ian Bogost, Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006).
  25
     Arnheim, ‘The Vanishing World and Köhler’s Inkwell’, in The Legacy of Solomon Asch: Essays in Cognition
and Social Psychology, ed. by Irvin Rock (New York: Psychology Press, 1990), 271–278 (277).
  26
     Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 286.
  27
     Ibidem, 25.
  28
     See Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the
Living (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1972). It is worth noting that later Arnheim (in ‘The Vanishing World’ essay,
1990) criticized autopoiesis for what he saw as an exaggerated emphasis on the living organism as an
operationally closed system, and insisted on the Gestalt perspective of a higher reciprocity between
organism and environment.
  29
      Francisco J. Varela, Eleanor Rosch and Evan Thompson, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and
Human Experience (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992), 155–156.
  30
     Johan Wagemans, Jacob Feldman, Sergei Gepshtein, Ruth Kimchi, James R. Pomerantz, Peter A. van
der Helm and Cees van Leeuwen, ‘A Century of Gestalt Psychology in Visual Perception II. Conceptual and
Theoretical Foundations’, Psychological Bulletin, 138.6 (2012), 1218–1252 (11).
  31
     Arnheim, Entropy and Art, 4.
  32
     See Gerald C. Cupchik, ‘A Critical Reflection on Arnheim’s Gestalt Theory of Aesthetics’, Psychology of
Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 1.1. (2007), 16; also see B. I. B. Lindahl and Peter Århem, ‘Consciousness
and Neural Force Fields’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23.7–8 (2016), 228–253.
  33
     Emmanuelle Tognoli and Scott J. A. Kelso, ‘Enlarging the Scope: Grasping Brain Complexity’, Frontiers
in Systems Neuroscience, 8.122 (2014), <doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2014.00122> [accessed 25 April 2022].
  34
      Robin L. Carhart-Harris, Robert Leech, Peter J. Hellyer, Murray Shanahan, Amanda Feilding, Enzo
Tagliazucchi, Dante R. Chialvo and David Nutt, ‘The Entropic Brain: A Theory of Conscious States Informed
by Neuroimaging Research With Psychedelic Drugs’, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8.20 (2014),



66                                                                       Poulaki, A Gestalt Theory for ‘Disorder’
<doi:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00020> [accessed 25 April 2022].
  35
     Ibidem.
  36
     Ibidem.
  37
     An indication of this much more favorable stance towards entropy is given, perhaps, by recent research
arguing that increased brain entropy has been associated with increased intelligence; see Glenn N. Saxe,
Daniel Calderone and Leah J. Morales, ‘Brain Entropy and Human Intelligence: A Resting-state fMRI Study’,
PLoS ONE, 13.2 (2018), e0191582.
  38
     Marco Brambilla and Sean Cochrane, ‘Q&A with Marco Brambilla & Civilization – Notes from Crush
Senior Artist Sean Cochrane’, Glossy, <http://glossyinc.com/misc/civilization.html> [accessed 10 January
2022].
  39
      Brambilla, ‘Marco Brambilla: Astral Projections’, Elephant, 3 February 2018, <https://elephant.art/
marco-brambilla-astral-projections> [accessed 12 January 2022].
  40
     Ibidem.
  41
     As described on Brambilla’s website, <https://www.marcobrambilla.com/work> [accessed 12 January
2022].
  42
     Brambilla, excerpt from interview in article by Virginia Valenzuela ‘Very Excited, Pumped, Excellent: Marco
Brambilla and the Winklevii’, SuperRare, 24 August 2021, <https://editorial.superrare.com/2021/08/24/
very-excited-pumped-excellent-marco-brambilla-and-the-winklevii/> [accessed 13 January 2022].
  43
     Valenzuela.
  44
     SuperRare, ‘Winklevii: Bigger Than Both of Us’, <https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/winklevii:-bigger-
than-both-of-us-27285> [accessed 12 January 2022].
  45
     Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra, The Empathic Screen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
  46
     Semir Zeki and Tomohiro Ishizu, ‘The “Visual Shock” of Francis Bacon: An Essay in Neuroesthetics’,
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7.850 (2013), <doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00850> [accessed 25 April 2022].
  47
     Esrock J. Ellen, ‘Body Forth in Narrative’, in Narrative Complexity: Cognition, Embodiment, Evolution, ed.
by Marina Grishakova and Maria Poulaki (Lincoln: Nebraska University Press, 2019), 270–290.




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