“entropy
ˈɛntrəpi/Submit
noun
noun: entropy; plural noun: entropies; symbol: S
1.
PHYSICS
a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.
”the second law of thermodynamics says that entropy always increases with time”
2.
lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.
”a marketplace where entropy reigns supreme”
3.
(in information theory) a logarithmic measure of the rate of transfer of information in a particular message or language.”
— https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=entropy

I find it a little hard to talk about art without thinking about /r/delusionalartists

That said, here are some ideas I have regarding these paintings.

To me, these paintings are about exploring the lines between order, information, randomness, and chaos. It may be unclear to the viewer to what extent these paintings fall into one or more of those categories, and it is down to the viewer to decide.

I’ve always been interested in the relationship between an artist, or more specifically their intention, a piece of their art, and the viewer’s impression of the work. To what extent does the viewer’s experience link, through the finished work, to the artist’s initial conscious intention, the impact of their sub-conscious, and/or accidental/random elements. Obviously, this will vary massively from one piece to another. In the context of these paintings two interesting phenomena come into play:

People are bad at simulating randomness. If you ask somebody to flip an ‘imaginary coin’ in their head 100 times and write down the results (heads or tails), then repeat the same number of trials with a real coin. It is usually possible to tell the two results apart. The ‘made up’ coin flips generally have far fewer runs of consecutive heads or tails, for example, 4 of 5 heads in a row would be very rare in this ‘human simulated randomness’. While in the truly random, real coin, these runs are far more common than you might think.

On the other hand, the psychological phenomenon of Pareidolia has what might be considered the opposite effect. That is, the tendency for people to see or hear information where there is none. Evolution found it very useful for people to recognise familiar patterns, a face or a voice, quickly (not really, evolution doesn’t care, but it had it’s advantages and so propagated). The human mind got a bit ‘too good’ at this, hence strange occurrences such as seeing faces in the hills of mars, hearing satanic messages in reversed music, seeing Jesus on toast, and finding shapes Rorschach inkblot tests or clouds.

Leonardo da Vinci wrote of this effect in his notebooks as “a new device for consideration which, although it may appear trivial and almost ludicrous, is nevertheless of great utility in arousing the mind to various inventions. […] if you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones […you will see] and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well-conceived forms. With such walls and blends of different stones it comes about as it does with the sound of bells, in whose clanging you may discover every name and word that you can imagine.”

So there is definitely some hidden information in these paintings, or they are just random. Just not quite as random as tv static. It has unintentional order sub-consciously added, but actually, you’re just seeing things. The truth being, that it was probably mostly influenced by a butterfly somewhere, and somewhat by whatever I was listening to at the time.