Painting as a Thinking Machine

Contents

Painting as a Thinking Machine interprets a class of painting that goes under the name of abstract, concrete, formalist or non-objective painting—the class of painting whose principle economy is an economy of materiality—as a thinking machine. It does so in relation to machine theory, automatism and complex self organizing systems capable of modeling emergence. It makes a case for this class of painting as being capable, under the right conditions, of becoming a wet thinking machine, and moreover, of the painter as a wet programmer. The implication is that in providing a model of knowledge where thought is coextensive with matter, this class of painting provides a symbolic neutralization of the idealist habit in western thinking that places the mind in a position of hierarchal superiority over and above nature.