Information in the Cracks

The other week I brought up how art is a form of communication here. There is another element that is part of art which could be called information. 

Though communication and information can be used in synonymous ways we can draw a meaningful distinction to illustrate a point. For the sake of a simple argument lets say that communication implies intent via sentience, and information doesn't. An example of information here is genes.

Evolution, by means of natural selection, has the ability create knowledge without intent. The copyability of the gene's "recipe" is how the information gets passed on. It does all this without intentional design via non sentient physical systems.

When we make art though, we like to think that any meaning it carries is due to our efforts of infusing it into our creation. Though this can be the case, it's possible that information finds its way into the medium without intent. I think of bands that are one hit wonders in this regard. How is it that the "insight" they seemed to have with that one song could only be leveraged once? Maybe it's because they didn't possess the knowledge to begin with. Perhaps they were operating on a superficial understanding of an idea that had more depth than they could know. Richard Dawkins would probably call this a meme.

Information can get passed along despite and in spite of human efforts then. This is a beneficial feature of information, because it means it is resilient and difficult to destroy or inherently alter. In a world were forms of despotism are always likely, we should be thankful they can't be hacked so easily. And even if one successfully alters information in some meaningful yet detrimental way, it’s likely that some robust information will be hiding in the cracks somewhere. I don't see how art could be exempt from this.

This is the beginning of a thought I had while reading Chiara Marletto’s book The Science Of Can And Can’t. Specifically chapter Three.