Probabilistic Aesthetics of the Avant-Gardes

Konrad Wojnowski is Assistant Professor of Performativity Studies, Jagiellonian University, Poland. His research interests include performativity theory, philosophy of communication, the impact of media and technology on culture and, more recently, the relationship between aesthetics and epistemology. He published two books in Polish: The Aesthetics of Disturbance (Księgarnia Akademicka 2012), on the cinema of Michael Haneke, andUseful Disasters (Universitas 2016), on the performative power of catastrophes in contemporary network culture, as well as multiple texts in Polish and English-language scientific journals. He headed two research grants provided by the National Science Centre (PRELUDIUM and SONATA programmes) and was awarded the prize for best young scientists by the Foundation for Polish Science.

• List of FiguresSeries Editors’ Preface1. Introductioni.Probability: From Rolling Dice to Spinning Atomsii.Human Existence Shaken Like Diceiii.Taming Chance with Art: An Overviewiv.Art and Science: Troubled Relationships2. The Futurists: Hooked on Uncertaintyi.The Uncanny Physics of Futurismii.Immaculate Perception Does Not Existiii.The Futurists’ Cognitive Artsiv.The Probabilistic Mind of the Global Art Marketv.Conclusion – Towards Probabilistic Self-awareness3. The Surrealists: The Probabilistic Unconsciousi.Probabilistic circuitry of neural networksii.Freedom for Probabilistic Minds!iii.The Cybernetic Anti-Humanism of Lacan’s Psychoanalysisiv.Lacan and Dalí: Paranoia as the New Normalv.Laboratories of Randomness – Bretonvi.The Surrealist L’Esprit de Probabilité4. Duchamp and Musil: Two Probabilistic Eccentrics, or Men without Qualitiesi.Taming Chance (in Cans, Boxes, etc.)ii.Making Art at the Roulette Tableiii.A Probabilistic Eccentriciv.Possibility Erases Identityv.A ‘Sense of Possibility’5. Cage: Music as Camera for Capturing Chancei.The Camera: Making Indeterminacyii.Cage’s Self-Determinationiii.Into the Age of Programs (and Out of Humanity)iv.Unexpected Pleasuresv.Variations VII: Amplified ‘Whatever’vi.Performance as Randomness in a Jar6. Xenakis: Ecstasies of Calculated Randomnessi.Probability and Discontinuityii.Calculating Soundsiii.Probability versus IndividualityBibliographyIndex

Well before the late twentieth-century vogue for chaos theory, Konrad Wojnowski reminds us, international modernism had already absorbed creative lessons about the chance nature of the universe from the new sciences of probability and indeterminacy emerging from statistical mechanics and quantum theory. Probabilistic Aesthetics of the Avant-Gardes offers an exhilarating history of these intellectual and aesthetic developments in the works of Boccioni, Breton, Duchamp, Cage, and Xenakis.