The amount of information contained in a message, in this case the word “information,” is measured by the predictability of what signal comes next as that message is constructed, in tension with the inherent structural limitations of the communication medium . 

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... media [through which] dissimilar data forms interoperate [...] Meaning is a data conversion” (144-145). Considered as packet-switched signals operative within the teletopologies of networked systems—a dispersed amplification of what Boris Groys called the algorithmic performativity of the digital image file (85)—the interface of distributed painting is necessarily layered differently than that of analog painting. Whereas the centralized, analog artwork is an aesthetic instantiation with physical, interfacial presence—size, sensuous surface quality, and so on— in distributed form it is manifest via an interface of commercial technology. The smooth glass surface and invisible interface of a tablet creates an interesting conceptual friction—a “data conversion” in Galloway and Thacker’s terms—when programmed to represent the semiotically complex, expressive facture of a painterly surface as understood in contemporary artistic discourse. The differential tension between our expectations of painting—physicality, texture and static permanence vs. the contingent, interactive qualities of a reprogrammable, invisible interface—opens up compelling possibilities for datafication , a term from big data meaning the quantification and tabulation of content into algorithmically analyzable formats (Mayer- Schönberger 78). For example, just as tracking the most frequently highlighted phrases in a Kindle ebook generates data above and beyond the authorial content of the text in question, the distributed painterly interface allows for data generation above and beyond the expressive or discursive content intended by the artist. A high-tech example of what Heidegger would call an ontic approach to art, the datafication of distributed painting suggests a reconfiguration of such binaries as drawing vs. design and form vs. content into a triangulation of form vs. content vs. data . 6 These relationships—datafied form vs. content and paratextual content vs. discursive metadata—provide a painterly corollary to what computer scientist Leslie Valiant describes as the facilitation of computer evolution through the “conceptual separation at the very beginning between the physical technology ... and the algorithmic content of what was being executed on the machines; [between the] physical object and the information processing it performs” (54). Interestingly resonant with Sol LeWitt’s statement that “the idea becomes a machine that makes the art” (846), this suggests a way to make the most of a slow medium like painting in the fast media of networked systems: by way of aestheticized communicability itself. As Anna Munster claims, in networked systems the important factor is not so much what a signal communicates, but rather a signal’s “nonspecificity, its communicability [....] The key is not what is spreading. ... What becomes crucial ... is movement between. Communicability, rather than communication, is key” (116-117). Unlocked from a materially static surface that unfolds content only over the long run, the distributed painting is a contextual zone, a “differential tempo of spreading ... where transitions occur and then speed gathers” (Munster 111). In other words, the importance of the content communicated by the distributed artwork is negotiated by the vectors through which that content is spreadable—not only an intriguing network variation on Harold Rosenberg’s description of action painting, but also a literalized version of medium as message in which the distributed painting is its own paratext, a dromological semiosphere generating its own data and metadata about—and as constitutive of—itself. 7 Whereas the medium specificity of materials and objects privileged a specific location and tangible presence, the trans-modal, post- object non-specificity of the distributed painting privileges vectors of circulation, copying, sharing and remixing. 8 This prompts the realization that as painting enters immaterial distribution channels its information potential increases dramatically, in terms of a foundational measure of information theory called Hartley’s formula , H = n log s . Here, H = the amount of information in a transmission, n = the number of symbols in the transmission, and s = the number of symbols possible in that transmission’s language. The information content of a transmission—including the type of visual transmission we call “painting”—was formalized further by Claude Shannon as the sum of the content of its symbol types, reduced by constraints on the likelihood of the appearance of any specific combination of symbols—known as the transmission’s relative entropy . Further, the appearance of any given symbol combination is limited not only by the intended transmission content, but also by the structural limits built in to the signal system itself—known as the signal’s redundancy (Shannon and Weaver 56). To be more precise, the amount of information contained in any particular message, such as in the word “information,” (Figure 3) is measured by the predictability of what signal comes next as the message is constructed. Unpredictability is initially high: given the way words are constructed in the English language just about any letter could come after the letter I . As the message unfolds—whether a word, a sentence, a conversation, or a book—the range of options narrows. In our example of the word information , by the end, following T-I-O , the likelihood of the next letter being B or Z , for example, is effectively zero because such a sequence of letters is always followed by the letter N . 9 This might sound fairly abstract, but consider the way different styles of art can be defined by this formula: the type of signal content put forward by any given painting ( H ) is constrained by its stylistic limitations—Impressionism or Suprematism, for example ( n )—which are defined by the number of possibilities allowed within the parameters of that particular stylistic language. This signal range of possibilities can be pushed only so far before it becomes a different style altogether ( s ). For example, there are only so many ways to make an analytic cubist painting: change its stylistic vocabulary too much—its signal range and channel capacity—and it becomes something else. The type of form and content one could put across ( H , the information in a specific signal like Picasso’s Ma Jolie ), was limited by the number of options used in the painting itself ( n ), which were in turn constrained by the narrow range of signal options ( s ) allowable by analytic cubism overall: flattened, shallow picture space, a generally monochromatic picture plane, synecdochal hints of representation, and so on. As soon as a painting stepped outside that limited signal spectrum it became something else: synthetic cubism, or constructivism perhaps. 10 Distributed painting, however, has an open-ended signal spectrum unburdened by the boundary conditions of materiality: manifest in multiple locations simultaneously, prone to remixing and privileging dissemination over form, the differential tensions between a particular artwork and its stylistic, material and formal limitations are blown wide open. While this increases its information potential, such an increase risks aesthetic dissolution into random noise: if it can theoretically be everything or anywhere is it really a valid example of anything? If art’s dynamism arises in part from the tension between innovation and history, the dynamic equilibrium between structure and surprise and between exploration and limitation, what happens when there are no longer any boundary conditions against which to push? If distributed painting is so different from traditional analog painting in almost every way, from form and content to aesthetic information capacity, how might it maintain a conceptual focus robust enough to remain “painting”? Correlatively, if its information capacity runs the risk of exponential increase toward meaninglessness, is there a mechanism by which distributed painting can maintain signal coherence as “painting”? I believe there is, by way of a notion called skeuomorphism. A skeuomorph is a visual metaphor such as a computer’s desktop or file folder icons— relatable representations that mask complex binary processes—simplified interfaces that make new or complex experiences less alien by resituating them in familiar terms. To give but one example, a computer’s “trash can” is actually a thermodynamic entropy-producing process of information destructuring—but “trash can” sounds less intimidating so we tend to call it that instead. When applied to digital visual artifacts, the term “painting” is itself a kind of skeuomorphic linguistic residue, operating the way we refer to an iTunes download as a “record” or an “album”, or how we “turn” “pages” while reading an e“book”. Just as the skeuomorphs of the graphic user interface made computers much more relatable, the skeuomorphic tag “painting”, when applied to the ways certain algorithms perform certain configurations of binary code, presents an adaptive aesthetic prompt node in which “a certain type of aggregate behavior can emerge from the stochastic, microlevel actions” of individual inputs (Miller and Page 46). This emergent, gestalt iconography—an ontologization of binary processes—is more easily grasped and appreciated by human cognitive capabilities when linguistically and visually subsumed under the skeuomorphic word “painting” (Figure 4). Such prompt nodes thus serve the function of defining as painting something that involves neither pigment nor stable surface. If post-Duchamp something previously not-art becomes art when an artist declares it as such, does something not-painting —involving neither pigment nor binder—become painting because an artist has declared it as such? While that may be the case, I believe something more is at play. In his 1969 essay Situational Aesthetics , Victor Burgin wrote of the importance of ...