Paperback
1970 · Andover, Massachusetts
by Burgy, Donald
Andover, Massachusetts: Addison Gallery of American Art, 1970. Paperback. G+. Some shelf wear. Ex-library book with usual marks. Indentations of edges of library plate show through cover. Pages slightly toned with age, but are otherwise clean and tight.. Ivory stapled wraps with black lettering. Approx 36 unnumbered pp. 3 pages with BW illustrations. In effect Burgy presents us with a set of mental exercises based on the most general analytic technique now in use, Systems Theory. Here the world, and the Universe, are envisioned as a series of interlocking systems, animate and inanimate, mechanical and biological, entropic and anti-entropic. As human, we see ourselves shelved in some of the middle echelons of the systems hierarchy. As artists we rarely go beyond the range of manipulating a few observables at any one time. In the natural order of the Universe echelons in any systems hierarchy only deal, one or two steps at a time, with the echelons directly above or below it. This is also true of human nature. But in evolving towards more complex and distant planes of organization, Burgy defines consciousness itself: the extraction of order out of chaos, information out of noise. All possibilities become tangential. -- Excerpt from introduction essay written by Jack Burnham.
(Inventory #: 163736)