Some Romantic Entropy
increase between
Certainty and Randomness
在确定与偶然之间的一些浪漫增熵
2024.10.26-2025.12.15
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Exhibition Introduction
This exhibition aims to explore the complex interactions between artificial intelligence and human creativity, re-examining the definitions and boundaries of creation from the perspectives of human geography and cybernetics. It emphasizes the romantic process of exploration and construction that occurs between determinism and randomness, investigating the possibilities of human-machine collaboration from a behaviorist standpoint in the information age. In the current state of global development, information has become the most important element in physics. Artificial intelligence not only influences the generation of artistic works as a technological tool, but it also reshapes the essence of art through these different input behaviors. Just as human creativity stems from experience and imagination, the involvement of artificial intelligence raises a new question: can its generation also be considered a form of creation?
本展览旨在探讨人工智能与人类创作之间的复杂互动，基于人文地理学与控制论的视角，重新审视创作的定义与边界。展览强调了在确定性与偶然性之间所探索与构建的浪漫过程，探索基于信息时代从行为主义角度人机协作的可能性。在目前世界发展，信息成为了物理学的最重要内容，人工智能不仅作为一种技术工具影响着艺术作品的生成，它也通过这种不同的输入行为重塑艺术的内涵。正如人类的创作源于经验与想象力，人工智能的介入则提出了一个新的问题：它的生成是否也能被视为创作？
人类为之自豪的想像也是焦虑与痛苦的根源。尽管现实残酷，人们惧怕现实，但与现实相比，人类更加害怕的事物常常存在于思想中。人工智能与当代艺术的结合，让我们重新思考人类创作的边界与定义。创作不再是简单的确定性与偶然性之争，而是两者之间不断增熵的浪漫过程。我们在中间景观中游走，既逃避现实的约束，又追求思想的自由；既受限于信息熵的增长，又在局部创造出有序与意义。这个展览正是在探索这些复杂关系的过程中，将人工智能与人类创作视为一个统一的浪漫过程。在确定与偶然之间的张力中，我们不断寻找新的创作方式和精神归宿。
Romanticism
Romanticism is a cultural trend in the modern West, which originated in France in the late 18th century. The basic feature of romanticism is the advocacy of emotions. Emotional gospel has become another ideological tendency different from the rational court of the Enlightenment. This tendency comes from Rousseau. Geography is mostly about routine life. If a geography-related work reflects the desire to transcend daily life or the desire for human perfection, it is regarded as being outside the serious academic field and is classified into the field of romance. He redefined romanticism and expanded the understanding space of geography. In "Escapism" by the famous geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, it is explained that in the long history of mankind, escape has never stopped. It is a continuous driving force that drives people to various destinations. Escape from the storm and return to a warm home; escape from the hustle and bustle of the city and seek quiet nature; escape from the distress of reality and pursue illusory fantasies. These escape behaviors seem to have negative colors on the surface, but it is this inner escape mentality that promotes the creation and progress of human material and spiritual culture. When talking about the heat death of the universe, Wiener emphasized that "we must have the courage to face the certain fact of personal destruction, and we must also have the courage to face the final destruction of our civilization."
If we regard spirit as the core of human existence, perhaps we need to regard the entire universe as a playground. In the face of fear and uncertainty, people use ancient methods such as divination or theology to try to foresee and even conquer fate. Visual symbols such as tarot cards have become tools to help people understand and cope with life challenges. Escape is also an act of creation and exploration. In the process of escape, duality is generated, and this binary opposition "constitutes the basic part of romantic geography: they focus on extreme situations rather than intermediate situations." The destinations that humans escape to are also constantly changing, escaping from the distress of reality and escaping to the illusory fairy tale world. If the concept of binary is the acceptable limit in the normal operation of human life, then the intervention of romance in geography has the possibility of transcending these limits. Romance is the pursuit of a supreme ultimate pleasure that cannot be described in words. Just like Nietzsche's Dionysian spirit, the Fool in Tarot Card Zero fearlessly walks towards the erupting volcano. In the face of uncertainty, human exploration is the purest expression of romanticism.
浪漫主义是近代西方的一种文化思潮,它产生于18世纪末的法国.浪漫主义的基本特征是推崇情感,情感福音成为与启蒙运动理性法庭不同的另一种思想倾向,这种倾向来源于卢梭.地理学大多是关于生活常规的。若与地理相关的某项工作映射出对超越日常生活的渴求，或是人类可完美性的热望，它便被视作游离于严肃的学术领域之外，被划入浪漫的领域。他重新定义了浪漫主义同时，也扩展了地理学的理解空间。在著名的地理学家段义孚的《逃避主义》中阐述，在人类漫长的历史中，逃避从未停止过，它是一种持续不断的动力，推动着人们走向各种目的地。逃避暴风雨，逃回温暖的家园；逃避喧嚣的都市，寻求静谧的自然；逃避现实的苦恼，追寻虚幻的幻想。这些逃避行为在表面上似乎带有负面色彩，然而，却正是这种内心逃避的心理推动了人类物质文化和精神文化的创造与进步。当维纳谈及宇宙热寂时强调“我们既要有勇气面对个人毁灭这样一桩确定无疑的事实，同样，我们也要有勇气面对我们文明的最后毁灭。”
若将精神视作人类存在的核心，或许我们需要将整个宇宙视作一个游乐场。在面对恐惧与不确定性时，人们借助占卜或神学等古老方式，试图远瞻、甚至征服命运。塔罗牌等视觉符号成为帮助人们理解并应对生活挑战的工具。逃避亦是一种创造与探索的行为，在逃避的过程中生发出二元性，而该二元对立则“组成了浪漫地理学的基础部分：它们聚焦于极端情况而非中间情况”。人类逃往的目的地也发生着不断的变化，逃避现实的苦恼，逃往虚幻的童话世界。如果二元概念是人类生活常规运作中可接受的限度那么在地理学中浪漫的介入便出现了超越这些限度的可能性。浪漫是对于一种不能用语言描绘的、至高无上的终极乐趣的追寻。正如尼采的酒神精神，零号塔罗牌中的愚人无欲无畏的前往喷发的火山。面对不确定性，人类的求索正是浪漫主义的最纯粹表现。
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Organic Carrier of Information (Entropy)
Cybernetics, derived from the Greek word for "steersman," establishes communication (transmission) and control relationships between organisms and machines through feedback mechanisms and the concept of information. Wiener proposed behaviorism (the study of the relationship between subjects and their environment) and structuralism (the study of the inner structure or organization and attributes of subjects) as opposing binaries. Compared to structural functionalist analysis, Wiener’s critical shift was placing machines and organisms—two distinctly different categories—within the same conceptual framework from a behaviorist viewpoint. The focus of behaviorism is on analyzing the various possible outputs of a subject, especially the relationship between these outputs and inputs. The mechanistic viewpoint concerning organisms suggests that they can be gradually disassembled to understand each part, concluding that the whole is merely the sum of its parts. In contrast, cybernetics emphasizes the whole, attempting to reveal its patterns. The matter that composes our bodies is subject to change; the only constant is the pattern, which is the essence of life. The pattern itself is information, which can be transmitted as such.Thus, Wiener viewed “heat death” and “progress” as opposing poles, indicating that human civilization will ultimately decline, just as the birth of life will eventually lead to death. He not only calculated mathematically and boldly inferred that the universe is trending toward decline but also posited that certain "local enclaves" exist that "go against the overall direction of the universe’s development," with their level of organization (order) showing a “temporary and limited increase trend.” Life itself is a phenomenon of local entropy reduction, representing regions that temporarily oppose the increase of entropy in the universe. Information is key to this struggle: the complexity of life and the integrity of organisms are maintained through counteracting entropy increase.Entropy increase brings uncertainty and randomness, and as certainty grows, it may paradoxically lead to the loss of even more possibilities. Thus, true creation often arises from the tension between chance and certainty. Today's large models exhibit unprecedented complexity, with functionalities like those of ChatGPT emerging from this state of critical complexity. When we begin discussing the fusion of artificial intelligence and contemporary art, we are not only prompted to rethink the definition of creation, but we also witness the romantic process bridging certainty and chance. Creation ceases to be about absolute certainty or complete randomness, evolving instead into an interplay of mutual infiltration and dynamic balance between the two. In this romantic process of increasing entropy, we are constrained by the growth of informational entropy while simultaneously creating order and meaning in localized contexts.
控制论（cybernetics）取自希腊语“掌舵人”（steersman），借助反馈机制和信息概念，在有机体—机器之间建立通信（传播）以及控制关系。维纳将行为主义（研究对象与环境的关西）与结构主义（研究对象的内在结构或内在组织以及种种属性）作为相互二元对立来提出。相较于结构功能主义分析，维纳从行为主义的角度将机器和有机体这两类截然不同的对象放在同一概念体系中，是他思想上最重要的变革。行为主义的研究重点在于分析对象的各种可能的输出，尤其是这些输出与输入之间的关系。对于有机体，机械论的观点认为可以将它们逐步分解，了解每个部分，最终得出整体只是各部分的总和。然而，控制论的观点则关注整体，试图揭示其模式。构成我们身体的物质是变化的，唯一不变的是模式，这就是生命的本质。模式本身就是信息，它可以作为信息进行传递。
因此维纳将“热寂”与“进步”视为对立的两极，指出人类文明终将衰亡，就如同生命的诞生最终会走向死亡。维纳不仅用数学方程式测算并大胆地推断宇宙趋于衰退，但一定存在一些“局部区域”（local enclaves）“和整个宇宙的发展方向相反”，并且其组织（有序） 程度存在“暂时和有限的增加趋势”。生命本身就是局部熵减的现象，是宇宙中短暂抗衡熵增的区域。信息是这种抗争的关键：生命的复杂性与有机体的完整性，就是通过对抗熵增来维持自身的存在。
熵增带来不确定性与随机性，随着确定性的增强，反而可能失去更多的可能性。因此，真正的创造往往是在偶然与确定之间的张力中产生的。今天的大模型具有空前的复杂度，目前ChatGPT实现的功能正是这样的复杂性在临界态涌现出的智能行为。当我们开始讨论人工智能与当代艺术的融合，不仅推动我们重新思考创作的定义，也让我们看到了确定性与偶然性之间的浪漫过程。创作不再是关于绝对确定或完全随机，而是两者之间的一种相互渗透与动态平衡。在这种浪漫增熵的过程中，我们既受限于信息熵的增长，又在局部创造出有序与意义。![]()
Middle Landscape
Binary opposition is a major characteristic of Western philosophy. The thinking pattern of binary opposition is reflected in the literature of ancient Greece, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. The literature of the Romantic period continued to inherit this thinking pattern, but its core transformed from external, abstract entities to the inner emotions of individuals. The emotion-centered binary opposition system indicates the Romanticists' perspective. Generally, binary concepts focus on extreme situations rather than intermediate ones, influencing our feelings and judgments about objective things and people in daily life. More critically, they also play an important role in how we envision and perceive challenging environments, such as mountains, oceans, forests, deserts, ice fields, and cities.In different eras, between the poles, humanity has created various "middle landscapes," which exist between the two endpoints of artificial metropolises and nature. These middle landscapes are regarded as paradigms of human habitat. In 19th-century America, under the impact of the Second Industrial Revolution, its pastoral ideals exhibited "a strong paradoxical quality: one side venerates materialism and expansion, while the other yearns for wilderness and return." Thus, at the juncture of city and wilderness, the countryside and urban parks became unique spaces where residents could project their pastoral ideals. Leo Marx described places like the countryside, which blend "the complexity of the artificial and the simplicity of nature," as a "middle state." He coined the term "middle landscape" to refer to the intermediate zone between the opposing forces of nature and civilization. These middle landscapes are all cultural products. However, they are neither extravagant nor arrogant. Such landscapes allow humanity to escape the primal and savage aspects of nature without undertaking long-distance migrations. As we enter the 21st century, the establishment of virtual spaces has become a new opposition to real spaces. The advancement of artificial intelligence has also brought the issue of the opposition between real creation and virtual creation to the forefront. So, what lies in the intermediate realm between 100% handcrafted and 100% machine-made? What exists in the intermediate realm between 100% self-imagination and 100% intelligent generation? Today's physics no longer explores the composition of matter but rather investigates the transmission of information. In other words, the foundation of physics is no longer the rigid certainty of Newton but the randomness of Gibbs. Thus, these works serve as practical explorations of the "middle landscapes" that lie between certainty and randomness.
二元对立是西方哲学的主要特点.古希腊,中世纪及文艺复兴的文学中都体现着二元对立的思维模式.浪漫主义时期的文学依然继承了这种思维模式,但是这种核心已由外在的,抽象的事物转化为人内心的情感.以情感为核心的二元对立体系表明浪漫主义者。一般二元概念聚焦于极端情况而非中间情况，它们影响着我们在日常生活中对客观事物和人的感觉和判断。同时，更为关键的是，它们也在我们展望和感知具有挑战性环境（例如高山、海洋、森林、沙漠、冰原和城市等）时发挥重要作用。在不同的时代，在两极之间，人类创造出各种各样的“中间景观”，它们处于人造大都市与大自然这两个端点之间，人们将中间景观称作人类栖息地的典范。19 世纪的美国在第二次工业革命的冲击下，其田园理想显示出“极强的悖论性特质：一面崇尚物质与扩张，另一面向往荒野与回归”。于是，在城市与荒野的交界处，郊野与城市公园地带成为了居民寄托田园理想的独特空间。利奥·马克思将类似郊野这种融合“人工的复杂和自然的简单”的处所描述为“中间态”（middle state），他创造了“中间风景（middle landscape）”这一术语，用以指代位于自然和文明之间的两种对立力量的中间地带。这些中间景观都是文化的产物。但它们既不花哨，也不目空一切。这种景观使得人类不必进行远距离的迁徙就可以逃避自然界的原始与荒蛮。那么进入21世纪，虚拟空间的建立，与现实空间的对立已然成为了新的对立面。人工智能的完善将现实创作还是虚拟创作的对立问题也带到了人们面前。那么在百分之百手工艺与百分之百的机器制造的中间领域什么？百分之百的自我想象力与百分百的智能生成的中间领域什么？如今的物理学不再去探讨物质组成，而是去探讨信息传递。换而言之，物理学的基础已不是牛顿僵硬的确定性，而是吉布斯的偶然性。那么这些作品便作为实践探索这些介于确定与偶然之间的“中间景观”。