Wrestling with Entropy

There appears to be a universal motion in the cosmos — a drift toward what we call disorder. As a maker, this reality creates a strange tension. Every mark I make will fade, yet something in me insists on making marks anyway. The metal I work with is oxidizing even as I shape it, but that oxidation becomes part of the work’s language.

In my series “Compositions in Corrosion”, I attempt to interpret our struggle with time and chance, using experimental patination. Maybe entropy isn’t simply the enemy of creation — it’s also creation’s most unpredictable collaborator.

This temporality frustrates and liberates in equal measure. I spend hours crafting a composition, knowing it will continue changing after I’ve declared it “finished.” Sometimes this evolution destroys exactly what I was trying to preserve. But other times, it creates something I never could have planned - colors that emerge from chemical processes I set in motion but cannot control, textures that speak in a language I’m still learning to read.

The temporary nature of all order means every creative act happens under pressure. There’s urgency in this, and a strange kind of grief. But there’s also freedom: if nothing lasts forever, then failure isn’t permanent either.

Beautiful things disappear back into noise, which can be disappointing but necessary. Without dissolution, there would be no space for new forms to emerge. The collapse of one pattern creates the conditions for another. I watch my work deteriorate and feel the weight of impermanence, but I also witness how that very impermanence enables transformation.

An uneven distribution of entropy is a necessary condition for the emergence of complexity. In the cosmic view, homogeneous gas clouds became stars through gravitational collapse — local decreases in entropy emerging from the universal increase. In my studio, similar principles operate on a smaller scale: I create conditions where chance and intention can generate unexpected order.

When I invite corrosion into my work, I’m not celebrating entropy — I’m wrestling with it. Rust follows its own logic, indifferent to my artistic vision. I can influence the process through choice of metals, control of moisture and temperature, timing of interventions. But the actual oxidation unfolds according to chemistry, not aesthetics.

This creates a strange kind of collaboration. I set up situations, then step back to see what emerges. Sometimes the metal responds with subtle beauty as oxidation creates color patterns and crystalline formations. Other times, the process simply eats through the surface I spent weeks preparing. The uncertainty is frustrating but necessary. If I could predict the outcomes, the work would lose its capacity to surprise me.

Rather than viewing entropy merely as decay, working with corrosion has taught me to see it as a creative force. The breakdown of rigid structures creates space for novel forms. Metal doesn’t simply deteriorate, but it transforms. Iron becomes iron oxide, creating new colors, new textures, new relationships with light and time. Entropy doesn’t just destroy existing order, it enables new kinds of order to emerge. The “destruction” of the original surface births a different visual language. What appears to be loss is actually metamorphosis.

Patterns of relationships that emerge, persist briefly, then dissolve to make room for other patterns. Are patterns an indication of self-organization? Yes, but not the static kind we usually imagine. Dynamic organization that knows its own temporality and is beautiful partly because of it. In my series “Moving Order”, I am further investigating these ideas using probabilistic computer programming combined with traditional painting and experimental patination. In this computational work, I program systems that generate more possibilities than I can evaluate. The machine creates faster than consciousness can judge. This imbalance forces interesting decisions: Which accidents are worth preserving? How do I recognize patterns that didn’t exist in my original conception?

The tension between control and surrender never resolves — it becomes the work’s subject matter and each generated composition presents new problems. I’m not programming art; I’m programming situations where art might emerge from the interplay between systematic processes and human recognition.

In both my corrosion work and algorithmic compositions, I’ve made attempts to read the signatures of these temporary organizations. They leave traces — in oxidation patterns, in emergent digital forms, in the accumulated experience of making work at the edge of control.

The relationship between life, art, and entropy isn’t partnership or opposition — it’s ongoing negotiation. Entropy holds most of the cards, but consciousness brings something entropy lacks: the ability to recognize patterns, to preserve forms temporarily, to create local complexity that wouldn’t arise spontaneously.

We create not despite entropy, but because of it. That drift toward disorder creates the conditions where new patterns can emerge. Without entropy, there would be no creative tension, no possibility of new forms emerging from the breakdown of old ones.

While the second law of thermodynamics pushes everything toward equilibrium, we can respond by making the contrasts in the world as great as possible. Not by fighting entropy, but by working with it to create more interesting distributions of order and disorder. Every conscious creative act increases local complexity while participating in the universe’s larger exploration of its own possibilities.

The struggle isn’t beautiful because it’s meaningful in some predetermined way. It’s meaningful because it keeps discovering new forms of beauty in the space between control and chaos, between intention and accident, between the temporary and the lasting. This is what makes the work worth doing: not because it promises anything permanent, but because the processes keep surprising me.